Apache Kafka is the backbone of real-time data pipelines across the industry, but running it well is hard. This talk starts with a practical look at what Aiven's managed Kafka offering gives you out of the box: high availability, automated ops, and the freedom to focus on building rather than babysitting brokers. From there, Hugh will walk through Inkless Kafka: Aiven's cloud-optimised architecture that decouples compute from storage, moving data to object storage and cutting infrastructure costs by up to 80%. You'll see how Inkless topics sit alongside classic Kafka topics in the same cluster, what the latency and throughput tradeoffs actually look like in practice, and when it makes sense to reach for each.

Session Speakers

Hugh Evans

Senior Developer Advocate @ Aiven and Community Organiser