Confluent Platform Generally Available and supported on DC/OS, allowing enterprises to build modern “Container 2.0” applications that combine Kafka and other Big Data frameworks with microservices.
SAN FRANCISCO — (Marketwired, August 1, 2016) — Confluent and Mesosphere today announced that Confluent Platform is generally available and will be commercially supported on both Mesosphere Enterprise DC/OS (Datacenter Operating System) and the open source DC/OS distribution. Powered by open source Apache Kafka®, Confluent Platform manages data streaming from any data source and makes it available throughout an organization so they can build better products, provide personalized customer experiences and adapt to business changes in real time. DC/OS is an open source technology, created by Mesosphere, that is built around Apache Mesos™ and offers the most reliable, scalable and easiest platform for running containers, stateful data systems and everything else that modern applications require.
Apache Kafka, which was originally created by Confluent’s founders while working at LinkedIn, is fast becoming the de facto technology for moving data across systems in real time to facilitate use cases such as interactive websites or mobile apps, the Internet of Things operations, and fraud and security monitoring. Confluent builds on Kafka with additional tooling and support to speed developer productivity, improve data management, and broaden the scope of applications that can benefit from Kafka, among other things.
Confluent Platform joins many other popular services, including other data services that are already available and installable with a single click, as part of the DC/OS Universe “app store.” These range from web servers and CI/CD systems to distributed databases, file systems and analytics tools.
DC/OS runs these services — as well as containerized microservices and legacy enterprise applications — on a platform that can aggregate thousands of servers, VMs or cloud instances into shared infrastructure that looks to developers and operators like one big computer. Aside from making it easy to install and deploy distributed systems and containers, DC/OS also provides them with “Day 2” operational improvements such as high availability, easy scalability and zero-downtime updates.
“Enterprises are transitioning from the world of Container 1.0 — where developers built simple, stateless services inside containers — to the world of Container 2.0 — where architects can operate major production workloads, comprised of stateless and stateful services, inside of containers on shared infrastructure,” said Florian Leibert, Co-founder and CEO, Mesosphere. “DC/OS is the only platform that supports this vision today, and it’s enabling users to build powerful applications pairing stateless microservices with stateful backend data services such as Apache Kafka. Our partnership with Confluent opens up even more possibilities by introducing next-level Kafka features and the commercial support that enterprises require.”
“As companies today leverage streaming data to make real-time business decisions, it is important to make it easy to deploy software in an efficient manner for managing data at scale,” said Neha Narkhede, co-founder and CTO of Confluent. “To meet this rising demand, the entire Confluent Platform is now fully supported and available in the Mesosphere Universe, making it easy for customers to build and operate stream processing applications using Kafka.”
A popular combination for applications requiring real-time data access and processing — both on shared DC/OS clusters and on traditional siloed infrastructure — is Apache Kafka, Apache Spark™ and Apache Cassandra™. And, while the open source distributions are powerful, many businesses require the features and support that only the commercial software can provide. This requirement drove Mesosphere’s partnership with Confluent.
Confluent Platform is available to deploy on DC/OS 1.8, which is available today as an Early Access release. Mesosphere Enterprise DC/OS 1.8 expands on an already-broad set of container-orchestration capabilities, with new advanced features for job scheduling, networking, security and authentication, and data management.
Enterprises today face the same challenges web companies like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter faced only a few years ago around developer efficiency, operational efficiency and data agility. Without a proven platform for delivering on these requirements, enterprises cannot fully embrace new architectural tools such as Docker containers and real-time data pipelines. DC/OS was already the only container-orchestration platform that meets these requirements today — running Container 2.0 workloads inside companies such as Verizon, Time Warner Cable, Esri, Autodesk, Wellframe and many more — and partnerships with leaders such as Confluent only make it stronger.
“Apache Kafka is an incredibly important component of modern Container 2.0 applications, and Confluent has built the best way for enterprises to consume it,” said William Freiberg, COO, Mesosphere. “We are very excited to work with Confluent to provide customers with the best, easiest way to build data-driven applications with Confluent Platform on DC/OS.”
Confluent Platform, an open-source platform, and Confluent Platform Enterprise, which adds a management tool that gives operators end-to-end visibility and operational strength to manage a Kafka environment, are available for download in the DC/OS Universe. Commercial subscriptions for Mesosphere Enterprise DC/OS and Confluent Platform Enterprise are available from Mesosphere and Confluent directly.
Confluent, founded by the original creators of Apache™ Kafka®, enables organizations to harness business value from stream data. 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, California. To learn more, please visit www.confluent.io. Download Apache Kafka and Confluent Platform at www.confluent.io/download. Follow Confluent on Twitter @ConfluentInc.
Mesosphere (Twitter: @Mesosphere) is leading the enterprise transformation toward distributed computing and modern applications with its Datacenter Operating System, and is the principal founding member of the DC/OSopen source project. DC/OS is a production-proven datacenter-scale platform for container operations and simple installation of complex distributed systems—including HDFS, Apache Spark, Apache Kafka, Apache Cassandra and more. Mesosphere was founded in 2013 by the architects of hyperscale infrastructures at Airbnb and Twitter, along with the co-creator of Apache Mesos. Backed by A Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Data Collective, Fuel Capital, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Triangle Peak Partners and Microsoft, Mesosphere is headquartered in San Francisco with additional offices in New York and Hamburg, Germany.
In March, Mesosphere announced that it closed $73.5 million in a Series C funding round led by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, with Microsoft joining as a new strategic investor. The round brought Mesosphere’s total funding to date to nearly $126 million and supports the company’s accelerating growth as DC/OS becomes the de facto standard for enterprises operating containers and distributed systems in production.