Ksolves’ Apache Kafka Adoption: An Experimental Learning

Do you know some times ago, Ksolves did something that totally changed the dynamics of software development for us. Well, it is time to let the secret out. We adopted Apache Kafka in our organization and must tell you there is no looking back since then. But, what really made the difference? Was it expensive? Did we do it without facing any challenges? How did we build an inside community?  

In this article we will answer all your questions and discuss how ksolves can help you adopt Apache Kafka services. Let us walk you through all the why’s and how’s of Ksolve Apache Kafka adoption.

Apache Kafka: Overview

Apache Kafka is an open-source distributed event-streaming platform that is used for implementing high-performance data pipelines, streaming analytics and mission critical applications. This event streaming architecture is used in robotic manufacturing, self-driving vehicles, device monitoring and millions of other applications for businesses. Six of the top 10 travel companies, seven of the top 10 global banks, and nine of the top 10 US telecom companies. 

Today Kafka is used by more than a third of the Fortune 500 companies. But, what is the reason for Kafka being so popular? The answer is simple, it could scale quickly and robustly.

Why did Ksolves adopt Apache Kafka?

You might be wondering why Ksolves choose Apache Kafka in the first place. Like all other organizations, we were happy with legacy systems. However, while carrying out some operations, we found out that these legacy systems are unsuitable for many of our use cases. While the legacy systems were real-time, they failed to scale and the ETL systems are not able to handle the data in real-time. 

Kafka came as a complete distributed streaming platform as it is a real-time platform, storing data to feed batch systems and provide real-time stream processing. 

Event-driven architecture always plays an important role in data architecture of any enterprise. Its ability to not only enable real-time applications but also its ability to decouple systems while sourcing and reusing data is a major hit among enterprises.

When we decided to adopt Apache Kafka it was not at all a collective decision. Migrating many use cases to a completely different and new system came as a challenge. Ksolves was adamant that the transition has to be carefully planned and data-driven. The two major factor that motivated us to adopt Kafka are-

• Performance- Before taking this decision that we will be using Kafka in our use cases, we spent a lot of time evaluating the performance. We saw that Kafka has lower latency irrespective of the amount of throughput. 
• Fault-tolerant- One of the best advantages of using Kafka is that it is fault-tolerant. The inherent capability to be resistant to node failure helps developers in many use cases.

Challenges in the way

While it sounds so great migrating to Kafka, it is not at all a super smooth process. We faced many technical and adaptive challenges while moving forward. The real challenge that came our way was to win the Kafka majority inside. Although Kafka found early adopters easily. However, after building a few applications in production, the progress stopped. The reason is people like to stick to existing technology rather than adopting a new one. 

We took a lot of time to show people how Kafka can change their lives for the better. We motivated our inside people to adopt Apache Kafka services for their operations by these techniques-

Shared success stories and educated people

We shared the success stories of our first few Kafka projects. We avoided overwhelming our people with technical details and unnecessary complexities. We also shared reference material with our in-house team.

Networking with people

Networking is always the best option for making people aware about new technologies. So, we did the same. The first step we took is to convince the influencers within us towards Kafka as their opinions are highly valued. The influencers are the people that can really push any organization to do certain things. 

We also faced a few issues from a technical point of view. We faced many challenges like configuration tuning and stream library Kafka. For Ksolves’ real-time use cases, we needed to fine-tune a large number of configurations. Similarly, we found many issues with metadata size in Kafka stream library.

Community

Kafka is widely used and being adopted for several reasons and developers are one of the most important reasons. Since Kafka is widely popular, it helps us with bug fixes and adds new features that help us in many used cases. The community helps us find solutions quickly.

We also created a Kafka community inside that is always ready to help us in any Kafka project.

Used Kafka in our Operations

Banking sector

Ksolves is helping banks, fintechs and financial institutions leverage the power of Apache Kafka. We have helped the banking sector by providing them Apache Kafka services to effectively detect anomalies and fraud in real-time. 

Energy and Utility Sector

Energy is the major fuel for industrialisation. Ksolves is helping many organizations that are facing challenges in energy consumption and management. We help with power outages and build smart communication systems to better predict failure. 

Healthcare sector

Ksolves has been closely associated with clients working in the healthcare sector. We have been providing Apache Kafka services towards advancement of healthcare, emergency and humanitarian services.

Insurance sector

Ksolves’ Apache services allows insurers to access real time events. We also helped them in building innovative applications to mitigate cyber attacks and offer insights to improve customer experience.

Managing Kafka services worldwide

Now, you might be wondering, whether to leverage managed kafka services or do it by yourself? We suggest that if you want to adopt Kafka it is better to take some help. Ksolves’ Apache Kafka services can help organizations worldwide adopt Kafka with low latency and high-durability. And, also if you get stuck at some point, you are going to get 24/7 support.

Conclusion

I hope by now you must have understood the steps we took to adopt Kafka. We know many of you out there are still struggling with Apache Kafka adoption. No worries, we can help with a smooth process. Ksolves is a leading Apache Kafka development company, and delivered many successful projects all over the world. With best in market price, our Kafka services can surely take your business on the pedestal of growth. We did it for ourselves, we will do even better for you. 

If you have any questions or need further information on Apache Kafka, write to us in the comment section below or give us a call.