Updated November 2026: We have restyled this July 2023 issue of The Kafka Report. The Big Data LDN dates now match the event (the meetup took place on 20 September 2023), the M1 Finance quote now matches our case study, the retired playbook download and broken image and source links have been removed, and the related reading points to our current guides.
Welcome to The Kafka Report, with the latest insights and updates on Apache Kafka and event-driven architecture. Let’s dive in.
Two Kafka use cases stood out this month. Both depend on reacting to events in real time rather than waiting for overnight batch jobs.
| Kafka use case | The trend | How Kafka helps |
|---|---|---|
| E-commerce in the era of AI | Customers expect personalisation, seamless interactions and dynamic pricing | Event-driven architecture tracks, analyses and reacts to customer events in real time, building a Customer 360 view |
| Cybersecurity | Criminals use AI to create sophisticated cyberattacks and fraudulent transactions | Real-time event streams let firms flag unusual behaviour, suspicious patterns and potential threats instantly |
| IoT and building management | Connected devices produce a constant stream of sensor data | Kafka ingests and processes millions of device messages, as Kugu shows below |
E-commerce in the era of AI: thanks to AI and machine learning, customers expect personalisation, seamless interactions and dynamic pricing. Companies that want to stay in the game use event-driven architecture to track, analyse and react to customer events in real time, an approach known as Customer 360.
Cybersecurity challenges: cybercriminals are getting smarter and using AI to create sophisticated cyberattacks and fraudulent transactions. Firms that care about keeping lifelong customers and protecting their reputation need to flag unusual behaviour, suspicious patterns and potential threats instantly, using real-time data.
We were thrilled to showcase Kugu, an innovator in building management. With Kafka, Kugu migrated its legacy resources to AWS. Its platform handles over 3 million connected IoT devices and processes more than 100,000,000 messages a day.
Christopher von Gumppenberg, Founder and CEO of Kugu.
New to Apache Kafka? Our playbook, “What is Apache Kafka? The Ultimate Kafka Guide”, covered:
The downloadable playbook has been retired. The same ground is now covered by our What is Apache Kafka? article and our four-part Apache Kafka guide.
Big Data LDN 2023 took place on 20 and 21 September 2023 at Olympia, London, and we hosted a Kafka Meetup as part of it:
| Detail | Big Data LDN x Kafka Meetup London |
|---|---|
| When | Wednesday 20 September 2023, 18:00 to 21:00 |
| Where | Fast Data Theatre, Big Data LDN, Olympia London |
| What | Kafka talks and networking |
| Why | Kafka knowledge, pizza and drinks |
Read the Big Data LDN x Kafka Meetup London 2023 event page for the speakers and talks.
“Thanks to OSO, we have been able to quickly execute our analytics initiatives without compromising our DevOps practices.”
— Nicklas Ankarstad, Senior Director, Data Science and Analytics at M1 Finance. Read how OSO helped M1 Finance launch a production-ready Tableau Server in 12 days.
Our blog is where we share the latest releases, new skills and practical guides for Kafka engineers:
Thanks for being part of the Kafka community. If you want to put one of these Kafka use cases into production or upskill your team in Kafka best practices, talk to OSO’s Kafka engineers.
Key takeaway: The strongest Kafka use cases share one need, reacting to events as they happen: Customer 360 personalisation, real-time fraud and threat detection, and IoT platforms like Kugu’s that process 100 million messages a day.
Common Kafka use cases include real-time analytics, Customer 360 and personalisation, fraud and threat detection, IoT data ingestion, change data capture, log aggregation and event-driven microservices. They all need events processed as they happen.
Kafka collects customer events, such as clicks, transactions and service requests, from many systems in real time. Downstream services consume them to keep a single, up-to-date view of each customer for personalisation and dynamic pricing.
Security and fraud teams stream transactions, logins and network events through Kafka so detection services can flag unusual behaviour and suspicious patterns within seconds, instead of finding them in a later batch report.
Kugu, a building management platform, moved its legacy resources to AWS with Kafka and OSO’s help. Its platform handles over 3 million connected IoT devices and processes more than 100 million messages a day.
The Big Data LDN x Kafka Meetup London took place on Wednesday 20 September 2023, from 18:00 to 21:00, in the Fast Data Theatre at Big Data LDN, Olympia London.
Talk to OSO's Kafka engineers about turning real-time use cases such as Customer 360, fraud detection and IoT into production Kafka platforms.
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