Confluent Announces Stream Governance, the Industry’s First Governance Suite for Data in Motion

With Stream Governance, more teams can tap into trusted data streams from across the business, making it safer and easier to unlock the full power of data in motion

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Confluent, Inc. (NASDAQ: CFLT), the platform to set data in motion, today unveiled the industry’s first governance suite for streaming data. Offered as a fully managed cloud solution, Stream Governance delivers a simple, self-service experience to discover, understand, and trust the real-time data that flows throughout modern businesses. Distributed teams now have quick, easy access to the data that’s critical to developing more real-time applications and business operations, all while maintaining data security and privacy. This provides organizations with a safe way to expand the use of data in motion and create a central nervous system that ties together disparate applications and systems. With streaming data available to more people, teams can unlock entirely new use cases that drive differentiation and exceed customer demands.

“With the sharp rise of real-time data, the need for governance over data in motion is more critical than ever,” said Stewart Bond, Research Director, Data Integration and Data Intelligence Software, IDC. “Confluent’s Stream Governance suite allows customers to harvest intelligence about, and gain control of, data in motion, to enable a balance between innovation and trust while expanding the power of streaming data in every part of the business.”

The ability to establish and operate around a central nervous system will be a major factor in determining who wins in the next stage of digital disruption. However, as the number of data sources continues to rise, it’s more challenging than ever to fully understand and safely manage all the data streaming across a business. Too often, this knowledge is in the hands of just a few streaming experts, creating unknown risks and blocking many teams from building applications powered by data in motion. To keep pace with evolving business needs and customer demands, organizations must be able to safely share data knowledge across more streams, more teams, and more use cases.

“Data in motion is becoming the key platform for companies looking to unlock their data,” said Jay Kreps, Co-founder and CEO, Confluent. “But to truly unlock data, it isn’t enough to make it accessible. You need to also ensure it is correct, compliant, and discoverable. With Stream Governance, we make the governance of streaming data easy and integrated so customers can ensure that their data is a solid foundation for their next generation digital initiatives.”

Introducing Stream Governance

Stream Governance makes the value of real-time data available across an organization, with both self-service data discoverability and scalable controls for long-term data compatibility and compliance. This new suite of capabilities establishes trust in the real-time data moving throughout your business while delivering an easy, cloud-native experience that empowers teams across any organization to quickly put these event streams to work.

“To provide homes where people feel safe and secure, we need our data in the exact same state,” said Mustapha Benosmane, Digital Product Leader, Adeo. “While Confluent ensures that our complex and ever-evolving data streams are always fit for use, keeping the technology framed and easy to use for our teams is one of our priorities. With Stream Governance, we have an additional tool to help developers in our growing engineering organization keep improving the way we work with data in motion. They’ll have easier ways to not only find the data they need but to truly understand it and gain the confidence required to put it to use right away.”

Share the power of data in motion with these new cloud capabilities that are now available as part Stream Governance:

Stream catalog: Increase collaboration and productivity with self-service data discovery

“When responsible for the safety of our customers and their families, confidence in data is of the highest priority,” said Sean Schade, Distinguished Architect, Care.com. “With tools like Schema Registry, we have access to a trusted, scalable supply of real-time data streams across cloud environments to power the services today’s families need. And we’re excited about the launch of Confluent’s stream catalog which can allow us to develop classifications of sensitive data and an easier means of maintaining regulatory compliance.”

With billions of events streaming across a business daily, locating the data needed to build and improve applications becomes a daunting, time-consuming task. Stream catalog allows individuals across teams to collaborate within a centralized, organized library designed for sharing, finding, and understanding the high-quality data needed to drive their projects forward quickly and efficiently. This includes topics, schemas, fields in schemas, clusters, connectors, and more. It’s like a digital library for data in motion, allowing any user—experienced with streaming data or not—to put it to use right away.

Stream lineage: Understand complex data relationships and uncover more insights

“As the world’s leading global equipment marketplace, we make buying and selling easy with critical customer services like real-time online bidding powered by data in motion,” said Nic Pegg, Platform Lead, Ritchie Bros. “Confluent’s Stream Governance suite will play a major role in our expanded use of data in motion and creation of a central nervous system for the enterprise. With the self-service capabilities in stream catalog and stream lineage, we’ll be able to greatly simplify and accelerate the onboarding of new teams working with our most valuable data.”

To make updates to mission-critical applications or answer questions on important subjects like data regulation and compliance, teams need an easy way to comprehend how data is moving between different systems and applications within a business. Stream lineage provides an end-to-end map of event streams with both a bird’s-eye view and drill-down magnification. With a better understanding of where data originated, where it’s going, and how it’s transformed, developers can move projects forward with assurance their work won’t cause negative or unexpected downstream impact. This also helps accelerate the movement of data in motion workflows from on-premises to the cloud.

Stream quality: Deliver trusted, high-quality event streams to the business

“Running a modern bank serving fast growing enterprises requires data in motion we can trust,” said Andreas Piefke, Head of Cloud Architecture, Judo Bank. “Schema Registry allows us to provide customers with reliable, real-time experiences for tasks like loan processing while we maintain focus on furthering innovations. We’re excited about new discovery capabilities within Stream Governance which will enable us to expand data in motion across teams and operate like a truly event-centric business.”

Being able to control the quality of data being written to a streaming ecosystem is critical to protecting against system failures and corruption. Confluent’s Schema Registry helps organizations scale data integrity without adding operational complexity. As part of this launch, Confluent is announcing the new Schema Management UI, which makes it easier than ever to understand which schemas exist, how they are defined, and where they are used. Standardizing around well-defined and agreed upon schema structures allows teams to develop resilient data in motion pipelines prepared for safe, compatible evolution over time.

Dive deeper into Stream Governance at Kafka Summit Americas

Learn more about today’s announcement at Kafka Summit Americas. Confluent Co-founder and CEO Jay Kreps will introduce Stream Governance during his keynote “Data Mess to Data Mesh” at 9:00 a.m. PT today. Also catch “Navigating Your Data in Motion” at 11 a.m. PT for a walkthrough and demo. Register here.

Additional resources

• Read this Confluent blog post to learn more about Stream Governance: https://www.confluent.io/blog/governing-data-with-confluent-stream-governance/
• See how Confluent is helping its customers transform their businesses: https://www.confluent.io/customers/
• Join Confluent and apply for one of its open positions: https://www.confluent.io/careers/

About Confluent

Confluent is pioneering a fundamentally new category of data infrastructure focused on data in motion. Confluent’s cloud-native offering is the foundational platform for data in motion—designed to be the intelligent connective tissue enabling real-time data, from multiple sources, to constantly stream across the organization. With Confluent, organizations can meet the new business imperative of delivering rich, digital front-end customer experiences and transitioning to sophisticated, real-time, software-driven backend operations. To learn more, please visit www.confluent.io.

The preceding outlines our general product direction and is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality. The development, release, timing, and pricing of any features or functionality described may change. Customers should make their purchase decisions based upon services, features, and functions that are currently available.

Confluent and associated marks are trademarks or registered trademarks of Confluent, Inc.

Apache^® and Apache Kafka^® are either registered trademarks or trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation in the United States and/or other countries. No endorsement by the Apache Software Foundation is implied by the use of these marks. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Contacts

Lyn Canilao

pr@confluent.io