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Confluent provides a centralized streaming layer that allows organizations to continuously move, share, and govern data across systems.

Instead of building and maintaining hundreds of fragile, point-to-point integrations, teams use event streams to create a shared data foundation and reusable data products. This simplifies architecture and allows data to be accessed consistently and continuously across applications, analytics, and AI initiatives.

For deeper technical details, see our data streaming platform overview.

Apache Kafka is the core streaming technology. Confluent’s platform builds on our cloud-native distribution of Kafka to make it production-ready, more scalable, and more cost-effective for enterprise environments.

Organizations that adopt Confluent benefit from managed operations, advanced governance capabilities, unified stream processing, and global resilience—without having to assemble and maintain those components themselves.

If you’re evaluating the differences more closely, visit our Confluent vs. Kafka comparison page.

Many teams begin with open source Kafka. As adoption expands, operational complexity increases.

Enterprises often transition to Confluent when they need:

• Greater reliability for mission-critical workloads
• Stronger governance and security controls
• Multi-region or multicloud scalability
• Reduced operational burden on engineering teams

The decision is less about replacing Kafka and more about evolving how it’s operated at scale.

Confluent helps organizations address foundational data challenges, including:

• Data silos created by point-to-point integrations
• Latency introduced by batch processing
• Inconsistent data across business units
• Operational strain from managing distributed systems
• Difficulty orchestrating and deploying AI with batch data in production

By establishing streaming as shared infrastructure, organizations can respond faster to market opportunities while maintaining control and consistency.

No. While many global enterprises use Confluent for mission-critical systems, organizations of all sizes adopt streaming to modernize data architecture.

Teams typically start with a single operational use case—such as microservice orchestration, change data capture pipelines, or operational monitoring—and expand over time as more teams and business units see the need for and the value of data streaming.

AI systems require timely, reliable, and governed data.

Confluent enables organizations to continuously stream trusted data into analytics platforms and AI models. This allows AI systems to operate on current context instead of static snapshots.

Streaming becomes the foundation that keeps operational and analytics estates and AI systems aligned. For architecture-specific guidance, explore our use case resources.

Without a shared streaming foundation, organizations rely on custom integrations and batch pipelines that require constant maintenance. Confluent reduces complexity by:

• Standardizing how data is shared and discovered
• Reducing infrastructure management overhead
• Reducing the need for and costs of data reprocessing
• Providing enterprise-grade reliability

This allows engineering teams to focus on building capabilities that drive revenue rather than maintaining infrastructure.

Teams typically evaluate Confluent when:

• Reliability and uptime become business-critical
• Cloud modernization initiatives are underway
• Kafka adoption is expanding into new business units
• AI or real-time initiatives require trusted, continuous data
• Operational costs and platform management are growing

Confluent often becomes relevant when streaming transitions from experimentation to core infrastructure.

Yes. Confluent is designed to integrate across hybrid, multicloud, and on-premises environments. It supports major cloud providers and connects with widely used data platforms and applications.

This allows organizations to modernize incrementally rather than replacing existing investments.

Getting started depends on your role:

• Developers and engineers often begin with a free trial to explore use cases.
• Architects evaluate migration paths and platform consolidation strategies.
• Business leaders review strategic value, ROI analysis, and modernization roadmaps.

You can try Confluent for free, speak with a streaming expert, or explore customer success stories to see how similar organizations adopted streaming.