IBM + Confluent: What It Means for Real-Time Data, Agentic AI, and You

IBM’s announcement that it will acquire Confluent for $11B is another strong signal that real-time data is becoming an increasingly critical dependency for organizations aiming to accelerate agentic AI adoption .In the age of agentic AI, enterprise systems simply can’t function without up-to-the-moment information. Agentic AI and automation hold the potential to revolutionize the way companies improve customer experience, make smart decisions, and optimize their operational efficiency — if they can effectively make the ever-increasing amount of data they capture and generate available everywhere it is needed, in real-time.

Why Real-Time Data is Critical for Enterprise AI

IBM’s announcement emphasized agentic AI as a strategic driver for the deal, and we agree with their logic, for three reasons:

1. AI agents and the applications, connected devices and information sources they rely on are increasingly distributed – running in diverse clouds, datacenters and edge environments around the world.
2. Agentic AI systems rely on real-time information that’s captured and generated in all corners of that distributed ecosystem, and that requires a modern, event-driven foundation.
3. Event-driven architecture replaces legacy batch and point-to-point data exchange with a decoupled approach that supports simultaneous delivery to countless recipients, and makes it easy to add more at any time.

More than two decades ago, Solace was founded with a focus on moving data in real-time as efficiently as possible. Since then, we have developed a platform that is trusted by global enterprises with the most demanding operational use cases.  At the heart of our solution is a unique approach that sets us up perfectly to push the envelope and meet the new and demanding real-time requirements now introduced by agentic AI.

It also is the foundation for Solace Agent Mesh, our newly introduced production-ready agentic AI platform. It helps you build agentic applications that work with your enterprise systems, data and security requirements from Day 1.

What This Means for You and How we Can Help

Many of the enterprise clients we work with are already asking: How do we ensure our real-time data foundation can allow us to realize the potential of agentic AI ?

Our platform is designed to help enterprises move real-time data across complex heterogeneous environments without forcing alignment to a single cloud, vendor, or integration stack.

It’s why some of the world’s most demanding enterprises – like Airbus, Barclays, Danone, Heineken, JDE Peets, RBC, Renault, Stellantis and Unilever – rely on Solace to move their data in real-time to keep their business running, when it matters the most.

Our focus is helping enterprises build real-time data distribution that spans clouds, regions, business units, and now generative and agentic AI systems. Independence, interoperability, and openness are core to our strategy, and always will be.

If you have want to discuss how we can help capitalize on the opportunity of real-time data infrastructure and agentic AI, let’s talk.