Kai Wähner

CORE

Global Field CTO at Confluent

Effeltrich, DE

Joined Jun 2010

https://www.kai-waehner.de

About

Kai Waehner is Global Field CTO at Confluent. He works with customers, partners, and analysts around the world. Kai’s main area of expertise lies within the fields of Data Streaming, AI/ML, Hybrid Cloud Architectures and Internet of Things. Kai is a regular speaker at international conferences, book author, and shares his experiences about new technologies and use cases across industries on his blog: www.kai-waehner.de. Contact: [email protected] / @KaiWaehner / linkedin.com/in/kaiwaehner. Download his free ebook about data streaming use cases: https://www.kai-waehner.de/ebook

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Reputation:	7984
Pageviews:	3.5M
Articles:	157
Comments:	5

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Articles

Cybersecurity with a Digital Twin: Why Real-Time Data Streaming Matters

Digital Twin for Cybersecurity with Data Streaming using Kafka, Flink and Sigma enables real-time visibility to detect and respond to threats.

April 20, 2026

· 2,632 Views

Scaling Kafka Consumers: Proxy vs. Client Library for High-Throughput Architectures

Scaling Apache Kafka consumption requires new patterns; proxy layers and client libraries offer practical solutions for high-throughput.

March 30, 2026

· 1,282 Views · 3 Likes

Online Feature Store for AI and Machine Learning with Apache Kafka and Flink

Real-time feature store powered by Apache Kafka and Flink enable fast, scalable AI personalization with fresh data and low-latency processing.

March 16, 2026

· 2,790 Views · 1 Like

Square, SumUp, Shopify: Data Streaming for Real-Time Point-of-Sale (POS)

POS systems are transforming into real-time, AI-driven platforms, fueled by mobile payments, Kafka, and Flink to empower every retail merchant.

March 9, 2026

· 3,238 Views

How Global Payment Processors like Stripe and PayPal Use Apache Kafka and Flink to Scale

How top payment processor companies like Stripe, PayPal, Payoneer, and Worldline use data streaming for real-time payments and fraud detection.

February 3, 2026

· 1,477 Views · 3 Likes

The Future of Data Streaming with Apache Flink for Agentic AI

Flink and Kafka enable real-time agentic AI by streaming fresh data and model context via the MCP standard for intelligent actions at scale.

January 21, 2026

· 1,934 Views

The Rise of Diskless Kafka: Rethinking Brokers, Storage, and the Kafka Protocol

Diskless Kafka stores all event data in object storage without using brokers for scalable and cost-efficient data streaming architectures.

January 9, 2026

· 1,692 Views · 2 Likes

Multi-Region Apache Kafka using Synchronous Replication for Disaster Recovery With Zero Data Loss (RPO=0)

Kafka isn’t one-size-fits-all. Choose between self-managed, serverless, or BYOC deployments. New RPO=0 options now enable zero data loss for real-time applications.

January 9, 2026

· 1,562 Views · 2 Likes

Agentic AI Using Apache Kafka as Event Broker With the Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A) and MCP

Agentic AI becomes scalable and production-ready when powered by Apache Kafka with MCP and A2A for real-time, decoupled agent communication.

November 4, 2025

· 2,263 Views · 7 Likes

The Top 20 Problems With Batch Processing (and How to Fix Them With Data Streaming)

20+ hidden issues with batch processing — like data loss, duplication, and latency — and why data streaming is the smarter solution.

October 8, 2025

· 2,176 Views · 5 Likes

Real-Time Model Inference With Apache Kafka and Flink for Predictive AI and GenAI

Learn how data streaming with Kafka and Flink enhances AI/ML model inference, enabling low-latency, scalable predictions in real-time business use cases.

August 22, 2025

· 1,737 Views · 2 Likes

Fraud Detection in Mobility Services With Apache Kafka and Flink

Mobility services like Uber and Grab use data streaming with Kafka and Flink for fraud detection by applying AI and machine learning in real-time.

July 17, 2025

· 4,798 Views · 1 Like

The Shift to Open Industrial IoT Architectures With Data Streaming

Modernize OT with Data Streaming, Kafka, MQTT, and OPC-UA to replace legacy middleware, enabling real-time data + scalable cloud integration.

July 4, 2025

· 2,828 Views · 1 Like

Replacing Legacy Systems With Data Streaming: The Strangler Fig Approach

Modernize legacy systems without the risk of a full rewrite. Strangler Fig + data streaming enables scalable, real-time transformation.

July 1, 2025

· 1,479 Views · 4 Likes

Top Trends for Data Streaming With Apache Kafka and Flink

Explore how Apache Kafka and Apache Flink are transforming data streaming, powering real-time analytics, and shaping cloud and future-ready business systems.

June 18, 2025

· 2,607 Views · 1 Like

What is Microsoft Fabric for Azure Cloud (Beyond the Buzz) and How It Competes with Snowflake and Databricks

Microsoft Fabric is a lakehouse built on OneLake Storage in Azure Cloud and competes with Databricks and Snowflake for data analytics and AI.

June 3, 2025

· 2,140 Views · 2 Likes

Comparing SaaS vs. PaaS for Kafka and Flink Data Streaming

SaaS vs. PaaS Data Streaming: Understand key differences in Apache Kafka and Flink cloud deployments to balance control, cost and ease of use.

May 2, 2025

· 3,828 Views · 1 Like

Stateless vs Stateful Stream Processing With Kafka Streams and Apache Flink

Concepts and benefits of stateless and stateful stream processing with Kafka Streams and Apache Flink vs. databases and data lakes.

April 21, 2025

· 6,996 Views · 4 Likes

Why Generative AI and Data Streaming Are Replacing Visual Coding With Low-Code/No-Code Platforms

Low-code or no-code tools simplify development but have limitations. Generative AI and data streaming (Kafka, Flink) reshape real-time, scalable workflows.

April 14, 2025

· 2,675 Views

Bridging OT and IT: IIoT Middleware for Edge and Cloud With Kafka and Flink

Explore how IIoT middleware and data streaming tools like Kafka and Flink bridge OT and IT, enabling real-time integration and smarter industrial operations.

April 2, 2025

· 4,501 Views · 4 Likes

Deployment Strategies for Apache Kafka Cluster Types

Multiple Kafka clusters enable hybrid integration, aggregation, migration, and disaster recovery across edge, data center, and multi-cloud environments.

November 19, 2024

· 2,317 Views · 2 Likes

Apache Iceberg: The Open Table Format for Lakehouses and Data Streaming

This article explores the table format wars of Apache Iceberg, Hudi, Delta Lake and XTable; and the product strategy of Snowflake, Databricks, Confluent, AWS, and Google.

November 12, 2024

· 5,107 Views · 2 Likes

Digitalization of Airport and Airlines With IoT and Data Streaming Using Kafka and Flink

Take an in-depth look at IoT and data streaming using Kafka and Flink at airports such as Schiphol AMS and airlines like Lufthansa and Cathay.

November 4, 2024

· 10,811 Views · 3 Likes

Hello, K.AI: How I Trained a Chatbot of Myself Without Coding

Follow a journey without coding to train a personal chatbot that can be used to learn in a conversational pace format about data streaming.

October 14, 2024

· 2,683 Views · 2 Likes

The Shift Left Architecture: From Batch and Lakehouse to Data Streaming

Explore the Shift Left Architecture using data streaming (Kafka/Flink) that enables data products for DWH, data lake, and lakehouses like Snowflake/Databricks.

October 8, 2024

· 4,047 Views · 2 Likes

Real-Time GenAI With RAG Using Apache Kafka and Flink to Prevent Hallucinations

Learn about context-specific real-time Generative AI (GenAI) with Retrieval Augmentation Generation (RAG) using Kafka and Flink to prevent hallucinations.

September 11, 2024

· 4,664 Views · 2 Likes

Open Standards for Data Lineage: OpenLineage for Batch and Streaming

Explores trends and efforts to provide an open standard with OpenLineage, and how data governance solutions help fulfill enterprise-wide data governance needs.

September 3, 2024

· 6,452 Views · 1 Like

Apache Kafka + Flink + Snowflake: Cost-Efficient Analytics and Data Governance

Explore shift-left architecture with Snowflake, Apache Kafka, Flink, and Iceberg for cost-efficient analytics and data governance in the cloud.

August 10, 2024

· 6,233 Views · 1 Like

Snowflake Integration Patterns: Apache Kafka vs. Zero ETL and Reverse ETL

Integration patterns for cloud-native Snowflake data warehouse: Batch data, Zero ETL, Reverse ETL, Real-time data ingestion with Apache Kafka.

July 24, 2024

· 6,548 Views · 2 Likes

When Not to Choose Google Apache Kafka for BigQuery

When not to choose Google Apache Kafka for BigQuery — a review, comparison with Confluent Cloud, and data streaming landscape outlook.

July 16, 2024

· 5,114 Views · 1 Like

Comments

Spring Integration and Apache Camel

Jan 11, 2012 · Biju Kunjummen

I just wrote an article, which explains my experiences with Apache Camel and its alternatives Spring Integration and Mule ESB:

Spoilt for Choice: Which Integration Framework to use - Spring Integration, Mule ESB or Apache Camel?

Best regards,
Kai Wähner (Twitter: @KaiWaehner)

Pros and Cons – When to use a Portal and Portlets instead of just Java Web-Frameworks

Oct 14, 2011 · Kai Wähner

Thanks for your comments.

@André: Well, you are right: You should not consider only product costs (they are not much cheaper for Liferay than for Oracle), but the whole development cycle. Maybe my article was a little bit unclear about this!

I see, you have a lot more experience with Portlets than me. We did not go any further, because we decided that a Portal / Portlets are not reasonable for our project.

Regarding the Oracle stack: We only evaluated the Portal which Oracle offered us combined with its Oracle SOA Suite (WebCenter). I did not make the choice, I just had to evaluate it...

@Erron: As already mentioned, I do not have much experience with Portlets. We decided that it is too much extra effort without creating a prototype or so :-) Thus, I cannot tell you anything about the GWT Portlet plugin. Maybe someone else can?

Open Source Integration With Apache Camel and How Fuse IDE Can Help

May 19, 2011 · mitchp

Hey Jonathan, this article is a good overview about Apache Camel. I can confirm that all promises about easier integration are true (because you always use the same DSL). I already tried out the BETA of Fuse IDE and wonder if there are plans for supporting Java DSL in the future? Yes, I am one of the guys, who does not like too much XML configuration :-) Best regards, Kai Wähner (Twitter: @KaiWaehner)

Creating Application using Spring Roo and Deploying on Google App Engine

Apr 10, 2011 · Shekhar Gulati

Hey Shekhar,

good article. But did you also realize some relationships between entities? I think "OneToMany" and so on do not work with GAE?

Best regards,

Kai Wähner (Twitter: @KaiWaehner)

Apache Camel: Integration Nirvana

Jan 04, 2011 · Jonathan Anstey

Very nice introduction to Apache Camel! Thank you.