We’re excited to share that SAS has joined the Connect with Confluent Technology Partner Program. This program helps businesses accelerate the development of real-time applications through fully managed integrations with the cloud-native and complete data streaming platform, Confluent Cloud—built by the original creators of Apache Kafka ® . Our customers now have the best experience for working with data streams from right within SAS Event Stream Processing (ESP), paving a faster path to powering next generation customer experiences and business operations with real-time data. “With SAS Event Stream Processing’s ability to deliver high performance real-time analytics, and Confluent Cloud's fully managed Kafka service, this partnership simplifies the path to unlocking value from data generated by sources such as IoT devices and sensors, as well as business and transactional systems. This combination provides organizations with the best of both worlds: the real-time decision-making power of SAS and the operational simplicity and scalability of Confluent Cloud.” Jason Mann, VP of IoT, SAS   Organizations today are increasingly reliant on Kafka as a critical component for ingesting and processing real-time data streams. The technology is used by more than 80% of the Fortune 500. However, self-managing Kafka can bring significant operational challenges and expenses in terms of infrastructure deployment, scaling, and other resource-intensive demands.  Combining SAS ESP’s high-performance real-time analytics with Confluent’s fully managed data streaming platform powers a new generation of applications, seamlessly transforming streaming data into insights.      In addition, the program supercharges partners’ go-to-market efforts with access to Confluent engineering, sales, and marketing resources. This ensures customer success at every stage from onboarding through technical support.    Build real-time applications with SAS ESP: By connecting SAS ESP and Confluent Cloud, businesses can streamline data flows from Kafka-based sources into SAS for advanced real-time processing. This integration accelerates deployment and ensures seamless, scalable streaming analytics that can support a wide variety of real-time use cases, from fraud detection to predictive maintenance.  End-to-End Streaming Analytics: From data ingestion via Kafka in Confluent Cloud to real-time processing in SAS ESP, businesses can build robust, end-to-end pipelines for actionable insights in milliseconds. Enhanced Productivity: With SAS ESP Studio’s drag-and-drop capabilities and Confluent’s visual Stream Designer, businesses can now efficiently operationalize data from Kafka and other sources, driving actionable insights with reduced development time and effort. Seamless Scalability: As your streaming data needs grow, Confluent Cloud and SAS ESP scale effortlessly to continue delivering real-time insights without bottlenecks. Enterprise-Grade Security and Governance: With robust security and governance features in both products, the integration ensures that data streams remain secure and compliant with industry standards while delivering the insights necessary for mission-critical use cases.  Simplified Management: With Confluent Cloud organizations no longer need to worry about the complexities of Kafka management, freeing up resources to focus on insights and analytics. How to configure the Confluent connector: Watch this video.   Not yet a Confluent customer but would like to learn more about SAS ESP’s integration with Confluent Cloud?  Check out the SAS ESP Azure Marketplace page here.    Start your free trial of Confluent Cloud today. New signups receive $400 to spend during their first 30 days. ... View more