What makes Apache Flink better than Hadoop, or even Apache Spark for big data processing? This is the main question to be addressed at this year’s Flink Forward event, currently underway in San Francisco, California.

The two-day show is the inaugural North American edition of Flink Forward, focusing on all things Apache Flink, an open-source stream processing framework for distributed big data analytics. SiliconANGLE is at Flink Forward San Francisco with exclusive interviews from its roving news desk, theCUBE. (* Disclosure below.)

When Apache Flink was announced as the Apache Software Foundation’s latest Top-Level Project two years ago, few people had heard about the project. Since then, the Apache Flink project has steadily been gaining traction as an alternative to the more widely used Apache Spark. Data Artisans GmbH, the original creators of Apache Flink, secured a $6 million Series A funding in March last year. The funding round was led by Intel Capital Corp.  

In September, data Artisans released the first version of its dA Platform, powered by Apache Flink. The dA Platform is the first fully supported commercial distribution of the alternative data stream processing engine.

Keynote speakers at Flink Forward San Francisco include various executives from data Artisans, including Jamie Grier, director of applications engineering; Stephan Ewen, chief technology officer; and various software engineers from the company, including Konstantinos Kloudas, Stefan Richter, and Ufuk Celebi, among others.

Other keynote presenters include Monal Daxini, senior software engineer at Netflix Inc.; Ted Dunning, chief applications architect at MapR Technologies Inc.; Scott Kidder, software engineer at Mux Inc.; Trevor Grant, open-source technical evangelist at IBM Corp.; Elizabeth K. Joseph, developer advocate at Mesosphere Inc.; and Erik de Nooij, IT chapter lead at ING Bank N.V.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

There are various ways to watch all of theCUBE interviews that will be taking place at Flink Forward, including SiliconANGLE TV and YouTube. You can also get all the coverage from the event on SiliconANGLE.

SiliconANGLE TV

You can watch all of theCUBE’s exclusive interviews and commentary from Flink Forward on the dedicated SiliconANGLE TV page.

Watch on the SiliconANGLE YouTube channel

All of theCUBE interviews from this year’s Flink Forward will also be loaded onto SiliconANGLE’s dedicated YouTube channel.

Cubecasts

SiliconANGLE also has podcasts available of archived interview sessions, available on both SoundCloud and iTunes, which you can enjoy while on the go.

Guests who will be interviewed on theCUBE

Guests who will be interviewed on theCUBE at Flink Forward include Dean Wampler, vice president of fast data engineering at Lightbend Inc.; David Hardwick, chief technology officer of BetterCloud Inc.; and Sean Hester, software architect at BetterCloud.

Other guests include Chinmay Soman, staff software engineer at Uber Technologies Inc.; Xiaowei Jiang, director in the search division at Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.; and Kenneth Knowles, software engineer at Google Inc.

How to watch the Flink Forward presentations

If you were unable to attend Flink Forward in San Francisco you can watch all of the presentations on the event’s YouTube channel.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner at Flink Forward. The conference sponsor, data Artisans, does not have editorial oversight of content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Image: Flink Forward