Name: IBM Event Streams
Brand: IBM

Overview

Accelerate your event-driven efforts

IBM Event Streams is an event streaming platform built on open source Apache Kafka®. It is available both as a fully managed service on IBM Cloud or on-premise as part of Event Automation or as part of CP4I.

To deliver more engaging customer experiences, you need to accelerate your event-driven efforts so that you can act in real-time. With IBM® Event Streams, you can leverage enterprise-grade event streaming capabilities to build smart apps to help react to events as they happen. Based on years of operational expertise gained from running Apache Kafka® for enterprises, IBM Event Streams is ideal for mission-critical workloads.

Features

Power every event stream

Fully managed service with native Kafka experience

Leverage IBM Support for deep technical expertise whenever you need it. Event Streams offers a fully managed Apache Kafka service, ensuring durability, high availability and security and compliance so that you can focus on value added tasks like building applications.

Review support plans

IBM Event Streams dashboard on IBM Cloud with navigation menu and Kafka service overview cards.

Kafka made easy

Use IBM productivity tools and the command line interface (CLI) to implement best practices. Create Event Streams instances and subsequent configuration by using Terraform. Work with all the standard Kafka APIs and clients on an Event Streams instance for a native Kafka experience. Additionally, Event Streams also provides 3 of its own APIs: Admin REST API, REST Producer API and Schema Registry API.

Find out more about our APIs

IBM Event Streams REST Producer documentation page showing Authentication methods and curl example panel.

High availability and disaster recovery

Event Streams is spread over 3 zones and is deployed in 10 multi-zone regions making it highly available. You can enable disaster recovery with rich security and geo-replication features. Take advantage of IBM productivity tools and use the command line interface (CLI) to implement best practices. You can also create your Event Streams instances and subsequent configuration by using Terraform.

IBM Cloud Docs page showing disaster recovery mirroring scenario for Event Streams with source and target cluster diagram

Schema Registry

Schema Registry provides a centralized repository for managing and validating schemas. The Event Streams Schema Registry stores a versioned history of schemas and supplies an interface for retrieving them.

Kafka Connect framework

You can use Kafka Connect with Event Streams for IBM Cloud and can choose whether to run the workers inside or outside IBM Cloud. IBM provides a list of over 50 connectors that are supported by IBM or the community.

IBM Event Streams Connector Catalog showing Kafka Connect source and sink connectors including Elasticsearch, IBM MQ, MySQL, and PostgreSQL.

Integration with monitoring and observability tools in Cloud

Get operational visibility into the performance and health of your applications, services, and platforms by using IBM Cloud Monitoring.

Monitoring Event Streams metrics

IBM Event Streams monitoring dashboard with charts for topic traffic, partitions, topics, and client connections.

Use cases

Build real-time, event-driven experiences

Facilitate machine learning

Use events to move from batch processing to real-time and predictive analytics using Event Streams for IBM Cloud.

Access years of Apache Kafka expertise

Get support around the clock from our team of Kafka experts. Event Streams for IBM Cloud is a fully managed Apache Kafka service, ensuring durability and high availability.

Increase scalability

Gain shared access to a multi-tenant cluster that seamlessly autoscales as you increase the number of partitions for your workload using the Standard plan. Alternatively, use the Enterprise plan’s scaling options to customize throughput, storage capacity, or both.

Secure by design

Data is encrypted at rest and in motion. IBM Event Streams offers integration IBM® Key Protect provides and IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Crypto Services services. You can also restrict your network access with context based restrictions and private networking.

Compliance

Both the Standard and Enterprise plans of IBM Event Streams are HIPAA-ready and compliant with PCI-DSS, SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISMAP, C5 and GDPR. The Enterprise plan includes managed security and compliance and is IBM Financial Services Validated.

Ensure high availability and durability

The Standard and Enterprise plans provide a highly available architecture using multi-zone region deployment and an availability of 99.99%. Use Apache Mirror Maker 2 to increase availability and keep applications working in a major incident that affects a full region.

Highly responsive customer solutions

Move data closer to applications by streaming change events from back-end systems, enabling fast, responsive customer experiences. Each application can build its own view without adding load to core systems, and event streams can be replicated across cloud environments for low-latency access anywhere.

Real-time data streams

Connect diverse data sources to a data lake, enabling real-time processing of clickstreams, transactions, and more. Stream processing apps can spot patterns instantly, helping businesses respond faster and refine decisions.

Case studies

Customer stories: building with Event Streams

Aerial view of two warehouse buildings with loading docks, parked trucks, trailers, and a central road.

SIB Solutions: Eliminating errors with AI helps enable flawless logistics

Kafka’s effectiveness in managing real-time data streams and facilitating seamless communication between microservices in distributed systems plays a pivotal role in advancing AI capabilities. Explore how SiB Solutions, a leading logistics technology company, leverages Event Streams for IBM Cloud to help businesses achieve zero error rates.

Norsk Tipping: Improving the gaming experience with event streaming technology

In Norway, Norsk Tipping uses the IBM Event Streams platform to accelerate data processing and deliver more responsive user services. Offering online betting on sports, casino games and various lotteries, its social mission is to provide a responsible and attractive gaming environment in which surplus funds generated go back to Norwegian society.