Systems | Development | Analytics | API | Testing

January 2025

Audacy Elevates Real-Time Listener Engagement With Confluent's Data Streaming Platform

Learn how Audacy, a leading multi-platform audio content company, transformed its operations with Confluent’s real-time data streaming platform, delivering personalized audio experiences to 200 million listeners. By moving from complex point-to-point systems to a seamless data streaming architecture, Audacy has streamlined operations and can now focus on delivering the personalized content, dynamic advertising, and data-driven insights they need to stay ahead in a demanding market.

New Security Tools to Protect Your New Year's Resolutions

In the ever-evolving landscape of data streaming and processing, securing and efficiently connecting services has become paramount as it ensures the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of data amidst increasing threats and complexity in cyber environments. Effective security measures must protect against data breaches and losses, fostering trust among stakeholders and complying with legal and regulatory standards.

How Singapore Embraces Data Streaming Across Finance, Air Travel & More

Real-time data has become an essential asset for today’s businesses, and the Asia-Pacific market is no exception. Across competitive industries like finance, travel, and more, data streams and event-driven architectures have become table stakes for leading organizations in the region.

Transforming Retail with AI: Confluent and Microsoft Azure

Discover how Confluent’s Data Streaming Platform and Microsoft Azure are revolutionizing the retail industry. In this video, learn how real-time data streaming and AI-powered insights can: Explore how Confluent and Azure’s seamless integration enables retailers to break down data silos, streamline operations, and accelerate innovation with scalable, enterprise-ready solutions. Whether you’re looking to modernize your retail infrastructure, enhance customer engagement, or drive operational efficiency, this video is your guide to leveraging AI and real-time data streaming.

Introducing Real-Time Embeddings: Any Model, Any Vector Database-No Code Needed

We’re excited to announce the Create Embeddings Action, the newest member of Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink Actions suite and the first step in our journey toward no-code AI workflows. This no-code feature enables you to generate vector embeddings in real time, from any model, to any vector database, across any cloud platform. It’s the easiest way to create a live semantic layer for your AI workflows—ensuring fresher, more accurate data for better-performing systems.

Google Cloud & Confluent Marketplace Marvels Series

In this episode of the Google Cloud Marketplace Marvels series, theCUBE Research’s John Furrier talks to Shaun Clowes, CPO of Confluent, and Stephen Orban, VP of migrations, ISVs, and marketplace, Google Cloud at Google. Clowes highlights the strategic partnership with Google Cloud, emphasizing seamless integration, scalable solutions and flexibility in marketplace consumption models. Together, they explore the platform’s impact on AI initiatives, enterprise analytics and rapid IT modernization, demonstrating how businesses can build next-generation data infrastructures one step at a time.

Allium and Confluent: How to Build a Foundational Data Platform for Blockchain

Blockchains enable individuals and organizations to record and verify transactions as part of a secure, transparent, and decentralized system. They form the basis of most cryptocurrencies, and are used as the foundation of many other applications—smart contracts, supply chain management, and digital identity verification, to name but a few.

Optimizing Supply Chains with Data Streaming and Generative AI

It’s a truism that global supply chains are complex. The process of sourcing raw materials, transforming them into finished products, and distributing them to customers encompasses numerous systems (e.g., ERPs, WMSs, and TMSs). All systems within “the supply chain” are trending in the same direction; they’re aiming to be more efficient, resilient, and agile. Various technological developments have facilitated this directional trend.

Event-Driven AI: Building a Research Assistant with Kafka and Flink

This post was originally published on Medium on Nov. 20, 2024. The rise of agentic AI has fueled excitement around agents that autonomously perform tasks, make recommendations, and execute complex workflows blending AI with traditional computing. But creating such agents in real-world, product-driven environments presents challenges that go beyond the AI itself.

New in Confluent Cloud: Extending Private Networking Across the Data Streaming Platform

As we step into the new year, it’s the perfect time to reflect on the exciting advancements Confluent made in 2024. Our Q4 launch wrapped up the year with a host of powerful features paving the way for even more innovation in 2025. This launch is all about delivering private networking and enhanced security across the data streaming platform.

Stop Treating Your LLM Like a Database

This article was originally published on The New Stack on Dec. 19, 2024. Imagine driving a car with a headset that only updates your view every five minutes instead of providing a continuous video stream. How long would it take before you crashed? While this type of batch processing clearly doesn’t work in the real world, it's how many systems operate today. Batch processing, born out of outdated technology constraints, forces applications to rely on static, delayed data.

Scaling Web Scraping With Data Streaming, Agentic AI, and GenAI

In building the next generation of web agents, we need the simplest, fastest way to extract web data at scale for production use cases. And for every new generative AI (GenAI) application, developers and businesses need reliable data to power the underlying models. But getting that data in a usable, trustworthy format? That’s where things get complicated.

Three AI Trends Developers Need to Know in 2025

Interest in AI has surged since 2020 and has dominated conversations across headlines and boardrooms ever since. So it’s unsurprising that business development has followed suit — 81% of IT leaders listed AI and machine learning as an important or top priority in their 2024 budgets, according to survey results in Confluent’s Data Streaming Report. But is all this attention and investment leading to a near-term future where AI is ubiquitous and functions as intended?