How to Act in the Business moment – The Time Is Now

A Guide to Data-streaming Platforms

I recently attended an in-person event in what seems like a very long time. It was nice to see so many faces at Big Data LDN in London, both familiar and new – all the while following safe COVID guidelines, of course. Apart from a great vibe, one of the things that struck me was a theme around getting access to data, in as near real-time as possible.

If there were ever the need to be able to act in the business moment, “The Time Is Now,” as Moloko brilliantly sang. The foundation to harnessing the power of now is having robust, high-performance analytic data pipelines, which deliver data in real-time. This is what unlocks the possibility of gleaning actionable insights from the freshest data.

A recent TDWI Pulse report confirms this: The majority (77%) of organizations indicate that near or true real-time data, dashboards and analytics are important to their firm’s success

This need – of being able to analyze the timeliest data available – is driving growth of many data streaming platforms. Today’s market is diverse. The most well-known streaming platform is open-source Apache Kafka, used by thousands of companies. Confluent offers fully managed services and tools for Kafka via Confluent Cloud. And, every major cloud vendor offers their own data-streaming technology.

I’ve summarized my top highlights for each vendor below.

Apache Kafka

Let’s start with the most well-known platform. Kafka is an open-source, distributed, streaming platform. It’s certainly become the cool-kids tool of choice for testing and development but can be prove difficult to work with if you don’t have the right skillset. This is causing the rise of many start-ups offering managed services around Kafka, including Confluent Inc.

Confluent Cloud

Kafka was originally developed by some clever folks at LinkedIn, who are now the founders of Confluent Inc., which recently reported a 66% sales growth. Confluent Cloud is their fully-managed cloud service for Kafka, which organizations are using to keep their data in motion. You can hear how companies like Generali and Conrad Electronics are using Confluent and Qlik to keep their data fresh.

Amazon Kinesis

AWS is almost in hypergrowth, with a Q3 growth rate of 39%. It’s no wonder its own streaming service – Amazon Kinesis – is a popular choice for large organizations, such as Netflix and Vanguard. Qlik recently achieved Amazon Web Services (AWS) Migration & Modernization Competency status, continuing to strengthen our long- running partnership. You can watch how Vanguard is migrating its data with Qlik to AWS.

Azure Event Hubs

Microsoft leads the cloud pack with the highest revenues. During the company’s recent user conference, Microsoft Ignite, it was announced that Event Hubs Premium is now generally available. This linked service in Azure Synapse provides customers with superior performance and predictability for mission-critical data streaming workloads, enabling them to manage event streaming, ingestion and analysis in real-time.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Google Cloud’s recent revenue reports showed off the company’s 45% growth, underscoring how the platform is really proving to be a popular choice for many organizations. Watch this webinar for some great insight into how Gordon Food Services is using Google and Qlik to deliver the freshest data to the cloud.

Choosing the Right Data Streaming Platform for Your enterprise Cloud

Data Streaming Platforms are clearly on the up, and there are a lot of event-stream processing platforms out there. Which is right for the unique data streaming needs of your organization?

Fear ye not: We’ve created a handy guide that compares the top data-streaming platforms, so you can take the first steps to making an informed decision for your business. Whether it’s Kafka, Confluent Cloud, Amazon Kinesis, Microsoft Azure Event Hubs or Google Cloud Pub/Sub, we’ve got you covered.

The good news is that Qlik can support you no matter which platform you choose. Read the eBook today!

 

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