Solace PubSub+ vs. Confluent

Legend: Great Good Other

Legend: Great Good Other	Kafka	Confluent	Solace
IoT	Not suitable for large scale Needs to be fronted by other MQTT brokers	Good sensor data consumption	Great sensor data consumption and command and control
Multi-Cloud	Static routing between clouds Poor reliability Complex remote client setup	Static routing between clouds Complex remote client setup Good IaaS services integration Poor throughput versus reliable performance	Great multi-cloud dynamic event routing No remote client setup required Great IaaS services integration Good throughput versus reliable performance
Microservices	Limited exchange patterns Java and other community driven languages Many uses not truly suited for Kafka batching	Limited exchange patterns Good language support Many uses not truly suited for Kafka batching	Great breadth of languages, protocols, message exchange patterns Messaging and streaming Advanced event mesh
Digital Transformation	Good CDC tools Less flexible multi-site hybrid cloud solution	Good CDC tools	Great when thinking of bi-model development in combination with hybrid cloud
Stream Processing	Core product use case	Great core product use case KSQL defines well-used patterns	Messaging and streaming with good 3rd party stream processor APIs integrated
Low Latency	Batch architecture limits performance	Kafka batch architecture limits applicability	Great core product use case
Analytics	Great core product use case	Great core product use case Nothing added	Good when thinking of bi-model development in combination with hybrid cloud
Transactional Workflows	No individual message acknowledgement	Can use Kstreams and transactions which adds complexity but you're then locked-in to Confluent license agreement for use as a service (I.e., Amazon/Azure can't do it)	Individual message ack out of the box (i.e., Need to act upon a ticket purchase)

See How PubSub+ and Kafka Differ

	Confluent	Solace
Schema Registry	Supports compact wire formats No lifecycle management or understanding of app interactions/dependencies	PubSub+ Event Portal enables design, discovery and management of events across brokers and environments Does not have a runtime schema registry
Connectors	Many connectors do not provide source code Must be certified to be supported by Confluent	Broker integrated connector or source/sink connectors as source code Native transparent protocol and transport translations
Clients	Supports other clients based on their C library for C++, Python and Go. Other language or wire format is only supported via connectors	Supports many client languages and transparent interoperability with multiple open source terminated transports and wire formats
REST Proxy	Allows retrieval of broker metadata and limited consumer/producer proxying between REST and native Kafka producers and consumers	Supports REST as a first-class producer and consumer Full request/reply MEP
MQTT Proxy	Terminates MQTT producers so persistent MQTT producer messages can be stored in the Kafka topic Can’t send messages to MQTT client through this proxy	Natively supports full MQTT broker for producers and consumers MQTT persistent messages are stored in the same Solace store Any other Solace supported API or protocol can easily access MQTT messages
KSQL	Proprietary SQL interface engine to Kafka streaming so consumers can get messages from topic and process SQL statement to move message to another topic	Many of KSQL’s capabilities are natively available viatopic hierarchies, topic-to-queue bridging and SQL selector statements
Replicator	Simple topic replicator software that allows primitive and limited DR and hybrid cloud capabilities for integration with Confluent Cloud and/or multiple broker clusters Slightly more robust than Apache MirrorMaker	Native enterprise-grade DR Specialized routing protocols intelligently move data in a hybrid cloud environment
Cluster Linking	More advanced topic replicator to facilitate multi-datacenter, multi-region, and hybrid cloud deployments It provides data distribution and HA/DR capabilities between multiple clusters	Solace solves multi-cloud data distribution using sophisticated dynamic bridges between broker clusters Native enterprise-grade DR These capabilities are available as standard offering, without additional components
Available Clouds	Available in most regions of Amazon, Google, and Azure, with additional regions available upon request	Available in most regions of Amazon, Google, and Azure, Huawei and Alibaba, with additional regions available upon request

Operations

Confluent Kafka brokers only
Data/schema management and Catalog
Schema Validation – Confluent Cloud/Platform
Operating data flows – Confluent Cloud ONLY
Tracking lineage – Confluent Cloud ONLY

Design to Operations

Supports all Kafka Distributions (Confluent, Apache, MSK) and messaging systems(Solace) – Mix and Match!
Event discovery to understand your existing event-driven assets (Schemas, Events, Applications)
Event Dependency Visualization at Design and Runtime
Lifecycle Management with versioning and promotions
Exposure of Event API Products for sharing across LOB and Orgs
Coming Soon: Audit your Design vs what was built/deployed, be alerted to design deviations

RBC: 1.3 million messages/second

At Gartner, Josh Carroll of the Royal Bank of Canada talked about his use of PubSub+

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Airtel: 100 billion events/day

Hear from CIO Harmeen Mehta about how Solace “unleashes” Airtel’s capacity.

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Jio: 280 million subscribers

The world’s largest mobile data network relies on Solace to provide a world-class user experience.

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VoiceBase: 2.7 billion minutes

Listen to Jeff Shukis, VP of Engineering at VoiceBase, talk about their use of PubSub+

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Comparing Event-driven architecture (EDA) Enabling Platforms and Technologies

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Source Connector

The Solace Source Kafka Connector for PubSub+ uses the Kafka Connect API to consume Solace queue or topic data events and stream them to a Kafka topic.

Learn more about the Source Connector

Sink Connector

The Solace Sink Kafka Connector for PubSub+ uses the Kafka Connect API to consume Kafka topic records and stream the data events to the Solace PubSub+ event broker as a topic and/or queue data event.

Learn more about the Sink Connector

You know and love Apache Kafka, but have you ever tried to visualize Kafka topology, or figure out who owns what event stream in a Kafka cluster? Your event-driven architecture has evolved, and your system has grown to the point where you’re feeling a bit… out of control.

That is why we have developed PubSub+ Event Portal. This event management toolset makes it easy for you to discover, visualize, catalog and share your Apache Kafka event streams, including those from Confluent and Amazon MSK.

About Kafka Event Streams

Still have questions about how Solace PubSub+ compares to the Confluent Platform?

Get in Touch

Solace PubSub+ vs. Confluent

Recognize when to use PubSub+, Apache Kafka, and the Confluent Platform

Wondering how Solace compares to the capabilities Confluent adds to Kafka?

Operations

Design to Operations

Tomorrow-proof.

Used by 6 out of the top 10 investment banks, PubSub+ is built for security and massive scale.

RBC: 1.3 million messages/second

Airtel: 100 billion events/day

Jio: 280 million subscribers

VoiceBase: 2.7 billion minutes

Comparing Event-driven architecture (EDA) Enabling Platforms and Technologies

Solace <–> Kafka

Learn more about it here and get started now with our Integrated Kafka Bridge Connector or for external embedded options, explore the Source and Sink connectors below.

Source Connector

Sink Connector

Discover, Visualize and Catalog
Your Kafka Event Streams

Still have questions about how Solace PubSub+ compares to the Confluent Platform?