Confluent, the data streaming provider, is unveiling the Connect with Confluent technology partner program, built for enabling Confluent partners to bring fully managed Kafka data streams directly to their customers through native integrations with Confluent Cloud. With both its integrations and extensive offering of support and expertise, the partner program aims to reduce the operational burden of Apache Kafka for partners’ customers, optimizing the technology’s low-latency, real-time data benefits.
In the push for real-time data, open source streaming platforms—such as Apache Kafka—rose in popularity to accommodate the modern demands for rapid data accessibility. While this certainly proved to be advantageous, it came with a catch; as entities such as Confluent partners began to build integrations with Kafka, their customers were left with a heavy operational burden, according to the company.
Expected to develop and deploy Kafka clusters, as well as individually integrate all their data into said clusters, partners’ customers were left to manually secure, govern, and manage these instances at scale. Though access to real-time data is critical for many enterprises, it became a rather challenging thing to achieve.
“The speed at which organizations can acquire software is far faster now, but collecting the data to allow various skill sets in the organization to become productive is incredibly tough. On top of that, it's usually hydrated using files or batch data, which means it's immediately dated,” said Paul Mac Farland, VP and head of the partner and innovation ecosystem at Confluent.
Responding to this urgent need for optimization, Connect with Confluent emerged to provide better, more simplistic integration experiences for Confluent’s technology partners’ customers.
“In order to take full advantage of real-time data streams, companies need to be able to push and pull data to and from all the major mainframes, SaaS applications, and databases across their enterprise. Our customers want to be able to realize this vision as fast as possible, and having a data streaming ecosystem through Connect with Confluent helps pave the fastest path to realizing that vision,” Mac Farland continued.
As a single, native integration with Confluent Cloud, this solution delivers fully managed stream processing, enterprise-grade security controls, and the industry’s only governance suite for Kafka, according to the company. By eliminating the operational burdens associated with Kafka deployments, customers can focus their attention on driving consumption and go-to-market strategies instead of managing Kafka.
Connect with Confluent delivers low-latency workloads, derived from any source or sink, with high-quality, serverless data streams. The company further offers over 120 source and sink connectors for the Kafka ecosystem, promoting a variety of new use cases accessible to customers.
“[With Confluent’s partner program,] customers get direct access to data streams from within our partners’ technologies where they’re already working,” explained Mac Farland. “By making it easier for partners to build fully managed Kafka data streams directly into their user experiences, our joint customers can speed up the development process for real-time applications with no requirement for latent data-at-rest pit stops in cloud storage buckets. With data streams exposed and readily available in more places, more people within our customers’ organizations can access them to build real-time use cases and drive real-time results.”
Not only does Confluent Connect alleviate the pains of Kafka deployments, it also provides robust support for the ongoing management of the data streaming capabilities of a customer’s platform. With Kafka experts, technical, sales, and marketing support, Confluent partners’ customers are empowered to experience real-time data without the real-time burden, according to the company.
The program is open to Confluent technology partners at no cost and benefits all Confluent Cloud customers. If you’re not already a Confluent partner, you can apply here.
To learn more about the Connect with Confluent program, please visit https://www.confluent.io/.