The Future of Kafka and Steaming

Aiven

Mar 26, 2026

Join Jeff Mery and Josep Prat as they discuss the future of Kafka and Streaming. In this deep dive, we break down the architectural shifts and hidden "taxes" currently hitting the data streaming ecosystem—and how to engineer your way out of them.

In this video, you’ll see:
The "Streaming Tax" Breakdown: A transparent look at how 3x replication, inter-AZ egress, and eCKU markups are inflating your TCO by up to 500%.

Aiven’s "Inkless" Architecture: A technical showcase of Diskless Kafka (KIP-1150). See how writing directly to the cloud fabric decouples compute from storage for near-instant scaling and zero-data rebalancing.

The IBM + Confluent Impact: An analysis of the acquisition’s risks, including the shift toward proprietary forks and the "Big Tech" bureaucracy that threatens open-source agility.

The Cost-Migration Blueprint: A step-by-step strategy to eliminate the "financial double-bubble" during migrations, featuring real-world results from companies like OpsHelm.

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AIVEN DATA PLATFORM
The Aiven Platform is more than a collection of open source services for streaming, storing and analyzing data. The platform ensures that all services run reliably and securely in the clouds of your choice, are observable, and can easily be integrated with each other and with external 3rd party tools.

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