Axual blog

Apache Kafka for Business

Apache Kafka Use Cases

Real Time Data Processing

Strimzi Kafka

Strimzi vs Confluent for Kubernetes: Which Kafka Operator should you run in production?

See how Strimzi and Confluent for Kubernetes compare on cost, operational responsibilities, vendor lock-in and enterprise support, with practical lessons from Axual’s production deployments.

Axual

November 10, 2026

Digital sovereignty

8 Confluent alternatives for European enterprises

Lee Sheinberg

November 4, 2026

Kafka Connect reimagined: One Connect server per team

John Aivalis

November 3, 2026

Release Blog 2026.3: The Autumn Release

Axual’s Autumn Release 2026.3 is here. You can now run multiple Kafka Connect clusters per instance for better isolation and no more noisy neighbors, and create Flink SQL applications to run stream processing jobs directly on the platform. This release also brings self-service service accounts, Strimzi v1 support in the Distributor, Terraform and MCP updates, and more.

October 2, 2026

Kafka AI

AI didn’t break software security. The volume of vulnerability reports did

Vulnerability reports are growing faster than security teams can process them. This article explores how AI can support vulnerability triage, why fixes take time to reach production and what the Trivy compromise taught us about software supply chain security.

September 3, 2026

Strimzi Kafka

How to configure Kafka Authentication in Strimzi

Learn how to configure secure Kafka authentication in Strimzi for multi-tenant environments. This technical guide covers mTLS, certificate-chain principals, tenant-specific listeners, custom principal builders, OAuth bearer authentication, and the risks of relying on Strimzi internals.

Daniel Mulder

August 4, 2026

Release Blog 2026.2 - The Summer Release

Axual 2026.2, the Summer LTS release, brings continuous message fetching and CEL-based queries to Topic Browse, Externalised Groups for managing membership through your Identity Provider, the move to Apicurio v3, improved Audit Events, KSML 1.3, and new MCP Server capabilities.

July 1, 2026

Strimzi 1.0.0: CRD Versioning, Conversion, and GitOps Operations

A technical overview of the Strimzi 1.0.0 CRD migration path, including CRD versioning, conversion tooling, storage updates, and operational considerations for ArgoCD-managed GitOps Kubernetes environments.

Daniel Mulder

May 12, 2026

Digital sovereignty

7 Reasons Europe Doesn’t Trust AWS’s “Sovereign” Cloud

This blog explores why many European organizations and policymakers remain skeptical of AWS’s “sovereign” cloud initiative. From concerns around US jurisdiction and the CLOUD Act to questions about operational independence, data governance, and true digital sovereignty, we break down the key reasons behind Europe’s hesitation. The article also examines the broader push for European cloud alternatives and what this means for enterprises navigating compliance, security, and infrastructure strategy.

Lee Sheinberg

May 11, 2026

Release Blog 2026.1 - The Spring Release

The Axual 2026.1 release builds on the improvements in governance, observability, and self-service introduced in 2025.4, and takes things a step further. This release adds audit event coverage across platform resources, giving teams more visibility and control over what’s happening in the platform. We’ve also extended OAuth support to all data plane components, making security more consistent end to end. On top of that, updates to Connector management and the Overview Graph make the platform easier to use and give clearer insight into platform activity.

March 31, 2026

MCP with Kafka

In this blog, we explore how the Model Context Protocol (MCP) enables AI applications to move beyond text generation and interact with systems like Kafka through structured actions. We will look at how natural language intent can be translated into real operations such as managing topics, schemas, and streaming applications, while also touching on governance, security, and the role of declarative approaches like KSML.

Abhinav Sonkar

March 26, 2026

Release Blog 2025.4 - The Winter Release

Axual 2025.4, the Winter Release, expands on the governance and self-service foundations of 2025.3 with improved KSML monitoring and state management, an enhanced Schema Catalog, and usability improvements across Self-Service and the platform.

January 1, 2026

Release blog 2025.3 - The Autumn Release

Axual 2025.3 release introduces KSML 1.1 integration for automated stream processing deployment, group-based resource filtering for multi-team governance, and experimental MCP Server for AI-driven platform operations. Includes JSON schema support, Protobuf processing (beta), and enhanced audit tracking for enterprise Kafka implementations.

October 1, 2025

Release blog 2025.2 - The Summer Release

The Axual 2025.2 summer release delivers targeted improvements for enterprise-grade Kafka deployments. In this post, we walk through the latest updates—from enhanced audit tracking and OAuth support in the REST Proxy to smarter stream processing controls in KSML. These features are designed to solve the real-world governance, security, and operational challenges enterprises face when scaling Kafka across teams and systems.

July 1, 2025

Release blog 2025.1 - The Spring Release

Axual 2025.1 is here with exciting new features and updates. Whether you're strengthening security, improving observability, or bridging old legacy systems with modern event systems, like Kafka, Axual 2025.1 is built to keep you, your fellow developers, and engineers ahead of the game.

April 4, 2025

Kafka Consumer Configuration: Optimize Performance with Key Settings & Use Cases

Kafka Consumer Configuration is at the heart of building efficient, scalable, and reliable data streaming applications. Whether you’re working with event-driven architectures, batch data ingestion, or real-time stream processing, the right configurations can make all the difference. In this guide, we’ll explore the most important Kafka consumer settings, break down their impact, and showcase practical use cases to help you optimize performance. By the end, you’ll have a clear roadmap to fine-tune your Kafka consumers for maximum efficiency.

Rachel van Egmond

February 12, 2025