What is Apache Kafka®?

Apache Kafka is an open-source event streaming platform that allows data to be moved from one place to another, making applications independent of each other. It's a simple piece of architecture but powerful due to its simplicity and ability to decouple different applications from each other. Kafka can be used in various scenarios such as monitoring infrastructure, triggering related business processes, creating dashboards, and enabling an event-driven architecture. It is often found at the center of microservice architectures where it serves as a pipeline for streaming data between multiple applications.