Apache Kafka
Apache Kafka is an open-source distributed log for high-throughput, durable event streaming, with a large ecosystem including Kafka Connect and Kafka Streams.
Apache Kafka is an open-source distributed event streaming platform built around a partitioned, replicated commit log. Producers append records to topics; consumer groups read them independently at their own pace, with durable retention decoupling the two.
The core broker is surrounded by a broad ecosystem: Kafka Connect for source/sink integration, Kafka Streams for stream processing, schema registries, and exactly-once transactional semantics for processing pipelines.
Kafka is the de facto backbone for event-driven architectures and streaming data platforms — carrying CDC streams, application events, and telemetry. It can be self-hosted or consumed through managed services (Confluent Cloud, Amazon MSK, and others); Redpanda offers a protocol-compatible alternative.
