Fast-rising data processing startup Confluent Inc. is turning to the cloud in a bid to speed up its growth.

The company today introduced a managed edition of Apache Kafka, the popular open-source data distribution engine created by its founders, that is positioned as a more convenient alternative to the vanilla version. Dubbed Confluent Cloud, the platform enables companies to take advantage of the framework’s features without the hassle of setting up and maintaining their deployments.

Launching a new Kafka cluster on Confluent Cloud only requires specifying how much infrastructure should be allocated to the environment. From there, a provisioning mechanism automatically configures a fresh install of Confluent’s commercial Kafka distribution according to the desired parameters. The software augments the core data distribution capabilities of the framework with value-added features designed to ease management.

Among them is a recovery function that can respond to localized failures in a Kafka cluster without requiring any manual input. According to a blog post by Confluent co-founder Neha Narkhede, the feature has been included in the new managed version to reduce downtime for cloud deployments. Problems that can’t be fixed automatically are handled by the startup’s support team.

Confluent Cloud has the potential to boost its growth efforts in two main ways. First, the platform should help the startup court organizations that were hesitant to come aboard so far because of the difficulty of setting up Kafka. And second, it will let Confluent generate more revenue from companies that are currently manually running the framework in the cloud, which a recent study put at 52 percent of the installed base.

Confluent Cloud is available immediately through an early access program. The offering currently runs on Amazon Web Services, with support for Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud due to arrive at a later date. According to Narkhede, the integrations will enable companies to switch providers in the event that their infrastructure requirements change.

The platform is already starting to attract interest. In an interview with Forbes, Narkhede said a smart TV manufacturer and a leading sports broadcaster have expressed plans to adopt Confluent Cloud.

Image: Confluent