Ably extends your Kafka pipeline to end-users at the edge

This article discusses how Ably complements Kafka for reaching end-users on the public internet. Kafka is an open-source event streaming solution that captures, stores, and processes event data using a publish/subscribe pattern. It is popular for building high-performance, event-driven pipelines due to its scalability, delivery guarantee, node failure management, high availability, and fault tolerance. Key concepts include events, topics, producers, and consumers. Kafka works best in private networks with a defined number of topics and predictable consumers. Ably is an edge messaging platform that offers a scalable, dependable, and secure way to distribute low-latency messages (events) to client devices via a fault-tolerant, autoscaling global edge network. It complements Kafka by extending its functionality across network boundaries for event streaming over the public internet. Ably channels can be created dynamically on demand and are at the core of its functionality. Ably's Four Pillars of Dependability match Kafka's capabilities: performance, integrity, reliability, and availability. It offers multiple security mechanisms, including SSL/TLS encryption, token-based and basic key-based authentication, privilege-based access, DoS protection, rate-limiting, and HIPAA compliance. The Ably Kafka Connector is a sink connector that maps Kafka topics to Ably channels for easy integration between the two pub/sub tools. It enables hassle-free data transfer from Kafka to an extensive subscriber list while ensuring data protection.