Kafka at a Crossroads: Cloud Streaming, Batch Convergence and 10x Cost Cuts (risingwave.com)

Kafka has dominated data streaming for years, but cloud-native platforms (Snowflake, Redshift) now ingest data directly, batch-streaming convergence (Iceberg, lakehouses) is reshaping architectures, and cost-efficient alternatives (WarpStream, Redpanda) are cutting costs by 10x. This article explores whether Kafka can adapt—or if the streaming ecosystem is moving beyond it.