Not All Kafka Services Are Created Equal: Confluent Cloud vs. Amazon MSK

The difference between cloud native and cloud hosted might sound semantic, but the two types of Apache Kafka® services create very different experiences for developers and architects. When comparing a service that’s cloud native and built for the cloud, like Confluent Cloud, to a cloud-hosted service installed in the cloud, like Amazon MSK, you have to think about each step in your Kafka journey. Your choice will determine whether your Kafka partner will ultimately enable you to meet your business objectives — or hold you back.

In this competitive analysis, we break down the differences between Confluent Cloud and Amazon MSK across your entire Kafka journey, including:

• Sizing and deploying clusters for Kafka along with Schema Registry, Connect, and ksqlDB
• Monitoring infrastructure and topics
• Maintaining cluster health with upgrades and vulnerability patches
• Scaling clusters and future-proofing your architecture

As you evaluate your event streaming options in the cloud, download this brief to parse the important differences.