A winning combination for real-time insights: Messaging and event-driven architecture

In today’s fast-moving digital economy, businesses are striving to stay ahead and invent new ways to streamline operations, improve responsiveness, and leverage real-time insights. We now live in an era defined by being active rather than passive. To stay ahead, companies need to be able to make proactive decisions, and that starts with building an IT infrastructure that provides the foundation for real-time data availability.

A key part of the solution needed comes from messaging infrastructure, and many companies already have a strong foundation in place. Above all, IBM® MQ has been recognized as the best messaging broker due to its ease of use, flexibility, scalability, security and many other reasons. Messaging queuing technology is essential to keeping your business running, but building an event-driven architecture based on messaging can be a critical factor.

Messaging you can trust

IBM MQ facilitates the reliable exchange of messages between applications and systems, ensuring that critical data is delivered quickly and accurately once to avoid duplicate or lost data. For 30 years, IBM MQ users have realized the tremendous value of investing in this secure messaging technology. But what if we could go further?

IBM MQ boasts the ability to integrate seamlessly with other processing tools using connectors (including Kafka connectors), APIs, and standard messaging protocols. Essentially, this sets the easy stage for building a robust real-time and fault-tolerant technology stack that we once only dreamed of.

There’s no doubt that IBM MQ is an industry leader. For companies seeking to succeed in this dynamic environment, investing in forward-thinking solutions is critical. The fact that IBM MQ has been successful and reliable in numerous use cases for 30 years should not be ignored. In particular, IBM MQ has flexible deployment options (available on-premises, cloud and hybrid). However, IBM MQ and Apache Kafka can sometimes be considered competitors, outperforming each other in terms of speed, availability, cost, and technology. Will choosing one provide the optimal solution for all your business operations?

MQ and Apache Kafka: team members

Simply put, these are different skills with different strengths, but are often perceived as very similar. Among other differences, MQ focuses on exchanging data accurately, asynchronously, and immediately through directed interactions, while Apache Kafka focuses on high throughput, large volumes, and sequential data processing to reduce latency. So, if MQ focuses on direct interaction and Kafka focuses on gaining insights, what are the possibilities of using them together?

We know that IBM MQ excels at ensuring accuracy and reliability of message delivery, making it perfect for critical workloads. We focus on providing trusted delivery and prompt response, regardless of the situation. When combined with Apache Kafka’s high availability and simplified data collection capabilities (which enable applications or other processing tools to identify patterns and trends), enterprises can immediately leverage MQ data along with other event streams from the Kafka cluster to develop real-time intelligent solutions. there is. .

The higher your intelligence, the better.

Real-time responsiveness and intelligence must be infused as much as possible into every aspect of the technology stack. With the amount of data flooding your business operations, you need a streaming platform that can help you monitor your data and take action before it’s too late. The key to building this real-time responsiveness lies in messaging, but its value can be expanded through event-driven architecture.

Imagine a customer-centric business that responds to thousands of orders and customer events every minute. A robust messaging infrastructure that prevents messages from being misdirected allows teams to build customer trust through message resilience. Your order won’t be lost and you can easily find it in the queue manager. However, event-based technology allows you to add an additional layer of stream processing to detect trends and opportunities, increase customer retention, or adapt to dynamic pricing.

Event-based technologies are emerging in the digital environment, starting with Apache Kafka, the industry leader in event streaming. However, IBM Event Automation’s advanced capabilities leverage the power of Apache Kafka and help enterprises take event-driven architectures to the next level with event processing and event endpoint management capabilities. You need a raw data stream coming from any application and the direct interaction of Kafka connectors or Kafka entities, allowing analysts and the broader team to gain insights without having to write Java, SQL, or other code. In other words, it provides the necessary context for business events.

Low-code, intuitive user interfaces and features help businesses empower low-tech users to accelerate their work with real-time insights. This significantly lowers the technology barrier by allowing business technologists to leverage the power of events without first having to go to a team of advanced developers to retrieve information from a data store. As a result, users can see real-time messages, identify ordering patterns, and solve problems cleverly by sending promotional offers, among many other possibilities.

At the same time, event endpoint management capabilities help IT administrators control who can access their data by creating unique authentication credentials for every user. By enabling self-service access, you can not only keep users informed of relevant events, but also add a layer of control to protect sensitive information. Uniquely, this gives teams the opportunity to explore event possibilities while controlling sensitive information.

Take the next step for your business.

Gain real-time insights easily with IBM Event Automation’s open source event processing and event endpoint management capabilities that enhance event streaming from IBM MQ and Apache Kafka, powerful middleware messaging systems. Want to know more? Register for the webinar to learn how these two advanced technologies fit into success in the digital economy.

Webinar: Seamless integration of IBM MQ and Apache Kafka for an enhanced event-driven architecture