5 Years of Confluent Cloud Connectors: Exploring Your Top Connector Picks

Confluent Cloud supports over 80 pre-built, fully managed connectors for data integration with Apache Kafka, which are built on the open source Kafka Connect framework and thrive with an active community. The Amazon S3, Snowflake, Google Cloud Storage, and Google BigQuery sink connectors consistently rank near the top of the list, while organizations often use multiple connectors to build streaming data pipelines. Leveraging fully managed connectors is the fastest and most efficient way to integrate data systems and apps with Kafka by eliminating operational burdens. Confluent's Stream Governance enables organizations to enforce high data quality and stream processing with Apache Flink, while custom connectors can be used for specific use cases. The Datagen Source Connector is a great place to start for developers deploying their first connector on Confluent Cloud, and the company has streamlined the connector configuration workflow to reduce friction and save time. Beyond cloud connectors, organizations may require self-managing certain connectors in their own environment due to security requirements, and Confluent Hub offers hundreds of connector plugins where users can filter by licensing type and check their deployment options.