When you’re one of many developers commanding streaming applications running in Apache Kafka, you want enough data observability to fly your own data product to the moon. But you also want to boldly go where no developer has gone before to discover new applications. At the same time, you don’t want to be exposed to sensitive data that summons you to your compliance team, crashing you back down to earth.
You’ve been handed the not-so-easy task of scoping a managed Kafka for your team. How do you start the shortlist? Post something on Reddit? Skim read a gazillion review blogs? Crash Google Chrome opening a thousand tabs to compare feature lists? If you’re going to run a Kafka POC with two or three vendors, or you’re trying to find the best Kafka for your business, how can you narrow down your selection? Let’s get to it.
Once upon a time (2017), in an office far far away, you may have been cornered in a conversation with someone from Legal about GDPR. It could have gone something like this: “You there, Data Engineer” “Yep, that’s me” “What PII do we have residing in this Apache Kafka database?” You probably mumbled something about Kafka not being a database. “And who can read/ write the data?
