Apache Kafka and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) are complementary, not competitive!
Apache Kafka is much more than messaging in the meantime. It evolved to a streaming platform including Kafka Connect, Kafka Streams, KSQL and many other open source components. Kafka leverages events as a core principle. You think in data flows of events and process the data while it is in motion. Many concepts, such as event sourcing, or design patterns such as Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIPs), are based on event-driven architecture.
Kafka is unique because it combines messaging, storage, and processing of events all in one platform. It does this in a distributed architecture using a distributed commit log and topics divided into multiple partitions.
ETL and ESB have excellent tooling, including graphical mappings for doing complex integration with legacy systems and technologies such as SOAP, EDIFACT, SAP BAPI, COBOL, etc. (Trust me, you don’t want to write the code for this.)
Therefore, existing MQ and ESB solutions, which already integrate with your legacy world, are not competitive to Apache Kafka. Rather, they are complementary!
Read more details about this question in my Confluent blog post:
Apache Kafka® vs. Enterprise Service Bus (EBS) | Confluent
As always, I appreciate any feedback, comments or criticism.
Social commerce is reshaping retail by merging entertainment, influencer marketing, and instant purchasing into one…
A Kafka proxy adds centralized security and governance for Apache Kafka. Solutions like Kroxylicious, Conduktor,…
Stablecoins are reshaping digital money by linking traditional finance with blockchain technology. Built for stability…
Cyberattacks on critical infrastructure and manufacturing are growing, with ransomware and manipulated sensor data creating…
Many enterprises want to become AI ready but are limited by slow, batch based integration…
Apache Kafka’s pull-based model and decoupled architecture offer unmatched flexibility for event-driven systems. But as…