Confluent Inc. is pressing forward with its goal of making Apache Kafka easier and safer to use, updating its commercial version of the open-source streaming data processing software with enterprise-grade security and new developer features.

Confluent Platform 5.0 is based on the Apache Kafka project that was first developed by LinkedIn Corp. Kafka was built to handle massive amounts of information LinkedIn collects from its business networking platform.

It can transport hundreds of billions of data points each day while also maintaining low latency, lending itself rather well to real-time data analytics. Kafka was open-sourced in 2011 and has since been adopted by a large swath of the Fortune 500.

Confluent built its platform to augment Kafka with a bunch of value-added features that make it easier to manage large-scale deployments. The company offers two versions – free and paid – for individual developers and large enterprises. Confluent’s main rival is a company called Instaclustr Pty Ltd. that offers a managed version of Kafka, but with fewer add-ons.

Today’s update shows that Confluent is taking security a lot more seriously. The platform now ships with something called an LDAP authorizer plugin that adds compatibility with Microsoft Corp.’s Active Directory standard and simplifies access control management.

“The majority of enterprises standardize on AD/LDAP for identity-related services,” Confluent product managers Raj Jain and Michael Noll wrote in a blog post announcing the new release. “The latest release of Confluent Platform introduces an LDAP authorizer plugin to set up access control for Kafka, allowing customers to use the user-group mappings in their LDAP server.”

Confluent is also upgrading its Control Center application, which is a monitoring console it introduced last year that provides visibility into data processed by Kafka clusters. Control Center gains feature access controls for topic inspection, schemas and KSQL so that unauthorized end users cannot access sensitive data.

On the developer side, Confluent is updating Control Center with a new graphical user interface (pictured) for composing and executing Kafka Structured Query Language queries. KSQL, as its known, is a version of the SQL language developed specifically for Kafka, and is used to manipulate or query data streams, tables and topics without using more complicated application programming interfaces.

The new release also enhances KSQL itself, with a series of new features and functions for working with nested data in Avro and JSON formats. Confluent is also making the KSQL REST API generally available, which makes its platform compatible with a broader range of programming languages, including Python, Go, .NET/C#, Java and JavaScript.

Finally, Confluent Platform 5.0 now supports the Message Queue Telemetry Transport standard, which is a lightweight messaging protocol commonly used by “internet of things” devices for communication.

Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. said Confluent’s latest release comes with some welcome updates, since streaming data is one of the key ingredients of next-generation software applications. He said that executives need more support and more integration services to integrate streaming applications with their information technology infrastructure, and Confluent was delivering on this.

“Confluent has specialized on this need and its 5.0 release is a key step forward, especially in regards to easier user integration, support for IoT projects and better disaster recovery options,” Mueller said.

Image: Confluent