Cloud-native messaging and streaming platform provider StreamNative Inc. is making it easier for enterprises to migrate from the Apache Kafka event streaming platform to Apache Pulsar with the launch of StreamNative Cloud for Kafka in beta test mode today.

StreamNative Cloud for Kafka is a streaming data platform that supports the Kafka protocol, though it runs Pulsar under the hood.

StreamNative’s founders were the original architects of Pulsar, which they built while working at Yahoo Inc. They established StreamNative to commercialize Pulsar, which was created to improve upon Kafka’s architecture with new capabilities that make it more suitable for cloud environments.

To do that, they added features such as built-in multitenancy and geo-replication to support global shared deployments. Pulsar also supports hundreds of thousands of partitions and topics with low latency, in addition to features such as worker queues and a wider array of messaging patterns.

StreamNative Head of Product Addison Higham said these capabilities are notable because they address some of the main constraints of Kafka. He explained that Kafka often struggles in cases where data needs to be segmented into tens of thousands of granular topics. In addition, Kafka’s lack of multitenancy means that teams running large numbers of microservices often end up with numerous Kafka clusters and low utilization, meaning they struggle with inefficient resource usage.

“StreamNative Cloud for Kafka helps to remove current Kafka limitations without having to change your application code,” Higham said.

Apache Pulsar has rapidly emerged as one of the Apache Software Foundation’s most popular open-source projects, ranking in the top five in terms of user engagement last year. What’s more, it has had more monthly active contributors than Kafka for the last 18 months, suggesting that it’s becoming more popular.

Organizations that have already adopted Kafka need to weigh whether or not the costs of migrating to Pulsar for its superior performance are worth it, StreamNative said. With StreamNative Cloud for Kafka, that’s no longer a consideration. It said companies can now use a fully compliant version of Kafka’s protocol to alleviate its biggest pain points.

Image: StreamNative