Confluent Introduces Partner Program to Support Rapidly Growing Apache Kafka Ecosystem

The Original Creators of Open Source Kafka and Enterprise-Ready Confluent Platform Ushering in Stream Processing Era, Enabling Businesses to Create Live Data Pipelines

SAN JOSE, STRATA + HADOOP WORLD (Booth #838)—March 30, 2016—Confluent, founded by the original creators of Apache™ Kafka®, today announced the Confluent Partner Program to enable a rapidly growing ecosystem around Kafka and the Confluent Platform. The new program provides partners with the resources, technical expertise and support to integrate, implement and innovate with open source Kafka and the Confluent Platform, an enterprise-ready platform built on Kafka to solve the challenges of data integration by providing a central stream data pipeline.

Today, thousands of companies such as Goldman Sachs, Netflix and Walmart use Kafka to make better use of their data so they can build better products, provide personalized customer experiences and adapt to shifting situations in real time.

Confluent Partner Program members will have the opportunity to develop robust data connectivity based on the open source Kafka Connect™ framework and to promote the solutions to Kafka and Confluent customers worldwide. Partners can:

• Leverage Confluent best practices around the Kafka Connect framework, developer tools and resources to build a connector or technology add-on
• Resource a full range of Confluent content and collaborate with Confluent’s team for Kafka Connect development and associated go-to-market activities
• Engage with the vibrant Confluent community for in-depth Kafka expertise and technical assistance
• Access Confluent marketing programs, sponsorship opportunities and other tools and resources
• Participate in beta programs

“The stream processing era is here and adoption of Kafka-powered solutions is accelerating even faster than we expected when we founded Confluent less than two years ago,” said Jay Kreps, CEO and co-founder of Confluent. “Confluent’s mission is to bring the power of Kafka to companies of all sizes so others can replicate the success we had with it at LinkedIn. Our partner program is a critical step in making this a reality by providing the technology community with the tools and resources to develop new solutions that will transcend what we can imagine today.”

Partnership Types and Levels

• Technology Partners: Specifically designed for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), Independent Hardware Vendors (IHVs), and OEMs. The Confluent Technology Partner Program provides Confluent technical enablement, Kafka Connect™ development assistance/certification, as well as marketing opportunities, partner resources and discounted training. Member and Certified integration partner tiers are available.
• Consulting + SI Partners: Our Service Provider Partners include Consultants and System Integrators who leverage Confluent solutions in building scalable data platforms for their clients. Member and Premier membership tiers are available.
• Authorized Training Partners: Training Partners include our growing network of delivery partners, training resellers and academic partnerships. Authorized Training Partners act as an extension of Confluent training offerings around Apache Kafka—utilizing Confluent generated course content and hands-on exercises.

“The groundswell of innovation from the Kafka community and the diverse partner landscape that is developing around it are creating more opportunity than ever for technology partners and systems integrators,” said Jabari Norton, VP Business Development at Confluent. “Through the Confluent Partner Program, we are committed to providing the world-class support, training and tools that drive increased value for our partners and ensures that their customers seize the operational efficiencies and competitive advantage that only streaming data can unlock.”

Supporting Quotes:

“We’ve seen very strong adoption of Kafka with many of our customers. As a result, Hewlett Packard Enterprise has now integrated Kafka as a data source and destination from directly inside HPE Vertica,” said Chris Selland, VP Business Development, Big Data Platform, at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. “HPE looks forward to expanding this integration and collaborating with the Confluent team to provide further value for our customers.”

“SignalFx is excited to join the Confluent Partner Program, and we look forward to working with Confluent as they bring the Confluent Platform to the enterprise and enable Kafka messaging for enterprise scale and reliability,” said Adam Zimman, Head of Business Development and Partnerships, SignalFx. “Partnering with Confluent, SignalFx will provide enterprises with deep insights into their Kafka pipelines through enhanced metrics provided by the Confluent Platform. Combined with metrics from the rest of their infrastructure, services, and applications–these enhanced metrics will give SignalFx users end-to-end visibility, monitoring, and dramatically improved alerting for modern infrastructure.”

“As adoption of Apache Kafka takes off in support of a variety of real-time use cases – particularly in financial services, healthcare, retail and telecommunications – our customers are leveraging Syncsort DMX-h data integration software as a single, easy-to-use interface to create a simplified data pipeline for all enterprise sources, including streaming, batch, mainframe and IoT data,” said Tendü Yoğurtçu, General Manager of Syncsort’s Big Data business. “Confluent’s enterprise-ready platform is instrumental to the growth of the Apache Kafka ecosystem and we are excited to be among the first companies to join their partner program. We look forward to our continued partnership, developing innovative new capabilities to support evolving use cases and providing the top level of technology expertise and support.”

The Confluent Platform: Kafka Made Easy

Confluent Platform turns an organization’s data into readily available low-latency streams, and further acts as a buffer between systems that might produce or consume such data at different rates. The founders of Confluent originally created Kafka while at LinkedIn to help cope with the very large-scale data ingestion and processing requirements of the business networking service.

About Apache Kafka

Apache Kafka is an open source technology that acts as a real-time, fault tolerant, highly scalable messaging system. It is widely adopted for use cases ranging from collecting user activity data, logs, application metrics, stock ticker data and device instrumentation. Its key strength is its ability to make high volume data available as a real-time stream for consumption in systems with very different requirements—from batch systems like Hadoop, to real-time systems that require low-latency access, to stream processing engines that transform the data streams as they arrive. This infrastructure lets you build around a single central nervous system transmitting messages to all the different systems and applications within a company.

About Confluent

Confluent, founded by the original creators of Apache™ Kafka®, enables organizations to harness business value from stream data. The Confluent Platform manages the barrage of stream data and makes it available throughout an organization. It provides various industries, from retail, logistics and manufacturing, to financial services and online social networking, a scalable, unified, real-time data pipeline that enables applications ranging from large volume data integration to big data analysis with Hadoop to real-time stream processing. Backed by Benchmark, Data Collective, Index Ventures and LinkedIn, Confluent is based in Palo Alto. To learn more, please visitwww.confluent.io. Download Apache Kafka and Confluent Platform at www.confluent.io/download.

For more information on the Confluent Partner Program, visit: www.confluent.io/partners

Jill Reed or Pete Johnson
Highwire PR for Confluent
confluent@highwirepr.com
(415) 963-4174, ext. 5