Kora Cloud-Native Event Streaming Platform Overview

This document is a technical report that introduces Kora, a cloud-native event streaming platform built on Apache Kafka, developed by Confluent Inc. It outlines the increasing demand for cloud-native solutions in event streaming and describes the design goals of Kora, which include reliability, elasticity, and cost efficiency. The report details how Kora abstracts low-level resources to allow users to focus on workload requirements rather than infrastructure complexities. It also discusses the architecture of Kora, emphasizing its ability to provide consistent performance across multiple cloud environments, including AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. The paper highlights the challenges faced during the development of Kora, such as ensuring high availability and performance while managing diverse workloads. Additionally, it presents Kora's ability to scale efficiently and adapt to changing workload patterns, thus supporting a wide range of industries and mission-critical applications. The document concludes with insights into customer pain points and the operational strategies employed to address them.