Warpstream is Dead. Long Live Cost Awareness

Confluent acquired Warpstream. Here are my takes on that

Confluent’s got two flavors of Kafka on the menu:

• First up, Kora. It’s a managed, serverless Kafka service that scales like a dream and runs on Confluent’s Cloud.
• Then there’s the Confluent Platform – think of it like RedHat compared to CentOS. It’s an enterprise-grade, self-hosted version of Apache Kafka, tried, tested, and fully supported by Confluent but running on your turf, your cloud.

Now, despite the headaches of managing Kafka yourself, a lot of companies still insist on taking the wheel with the Confluent Platform. Maybe it’s for tighter security, costs, compliance, or just the peace of mind that comes from not handing their data over to someone else.

But here’s the kicker – they might feel safer, perhaps contained, but they’re not exactly happier. And when customers don’t feel happy, that’s when you start seeing cracks and possible attrition.

Let’s circle back to Warpstream.

Warpstream built a good product—a streaming engine that’s Kafka-compatible, uses cheap storage, and cuts down operational headaches. Smart move. With Warpstream, Confluent gets that “in” they’ve been looking for in the Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) game. Aiven and Redpanda are already players, but Confluent just entered the arena.

So, here’s what this move tells me:

1. BYOC isn’t just the future—it’s the only viable architecture when it comes to big data products.
2. Cost is king. Yeah, it’s the most obvious thing in the world, but let’s not kid ourselves—cost has never been this top of mind like it is in 2024, and it’s only going to get more intense in the years ahead.

Every company wants to slash expenses and boost margins. That’s a critical mission now. At the same time, every forecast out there says individual, privately generated data is about to double, even triple, and individual companies are about to increase their spending on data by 2027-28, which also means that costs for everything else are going to follow that rocket.

BYOC? That’s how you can slow down costs:

• No outbound traffic costs.
• Your data, your rules. Store it how you want.
• Better leverage. You get to work with your cloud provider for better deals on storage and computing.
• Still managed, still supported.

Bottom line: BYOC is how you keep control without bleeding cash.

Let’s talk about Superstream’s perspective.

With Superstream, no infrastructure or app changes are needed to deliver significant value—think about cost efficiency, performance gains, and rock-solid reliability with your existing Kafka, no matter the vendor or type. We’re vendor-agnostic.

If cutting costs is your goal, deploying Superstream on top of your existing Kafka gets you at least equal cost savings—without the headaches of compromised performance, painful migrations, or overhauling your environment.

From day one, Superstream’s been all-in on BYOC. Why? Because slashing costs is how you unlock the next wave of data-driven innovation.

For Confluent users looking at Warpstream, you’ll save on storage costs. Combine Superstream with that, and you can also greatly reduce traffic and computing.

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