Confluent, Inc. announced the Confluent Terraform Provider as part of its Q3 ‘22 Launch. Developed in partnership with HashiCorp, the Terraform provider exposes Confluent Cloud APIs for simple, consistent, and automated management of mission-critical data streaming resources, including cloud environments, Apache Kafka clusters, networks, topics, connectors, and more. Now, engineering teams can easily integrate data streaming within CI/CD workflows and GitOps processes on AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, enabling them to launch real-time applications faster and avoid the high operational costs and risks tied to manual resource provisioning.

"The need to stay ahead of customer demands is fueling the shift to technology stacks powered by data streams and cloud technologies," said Ganesh Srinivasan, Chief Product Officer, Confluent. "With our HashiCorp Terraform integration, organizations get the power of data streaming across all major cloud providers with the simplicity of infrastructure as code and automation. This means developers have safe, reliable access to the infrastructure resources they need, so they can focus on building applications that truly move the needle for their businesses."

Data streaming is increasingly essential to deliver the real-time experiences today's customers demand and data-driven operations businesses need. But developers building and launching data streaming applications with open-source Apache Kafka are often blocked, waiting for access to infrastructure resources. Those requests are usually handled by a small team of experts who support the entire business and a highly complex tech stack. These teams can easily get bogged down in time-consuming, manual processes for managing infrastructure, which quickly puts new developments behind schedule. Manual provisioning also introduces high levels of risk, which is unacceptable when data streaming is powering a business's most sensitive, mission-critical use cases. Integration with a proven tool like Terraform can save time, speed up new releases and add even more security.

"Helping our customers save time and money with smart, real-time inventory management solutions is dependent upon widespread use of real-time data streaming throughout our entire business," said Rolando Berrios, Director of Engineering, Okedo. "With Confluent's Terraform Provider, we're able to completely automate our infrastructure deployments as code with no sacrifice on quality or security. With consistent, version-controlled deployments managed through a tool our teams already know, we're able to move quickly and maintain focus on new, value-add projects."

The Confluent Terraform Provider gives engineering teams easy access to the full set of data streaming resources they need, ranging from Kafka clusters and private networks to service accounts and ACLs. With provisioning and management of data streaming infrastructure automated throughout all clouds, the benefits of real-time data can scale across the entire business to fuel faster innovation from a wider set of teams. With the new Terraform provider, teams can:

• Reduce complexity and risk with infrastructure deployments managed as code and deployed through automated GitOps integration.
• Increase developer autonomy and productivity with consistent, version-controlled access to data streaming environments, Kafka clusters, Kafka topics, and more.
• Integrate Confluent deployments within existing cloud workflows on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud using standardized resource management tooling, pipelines, and processes.

"The new, verified Terraform provider for Confluent makes provisioning critical data streaming resources simple and reliable," said Burzin Patel, VP, Global Partner Alliances, HashiCorp. "It automates deployments within existing CI/CD workflows across all major cloud services so organizations can easily access the real-time data they need for innovation with far less time focused on infrastructure management."

More New Innovations in the Q3 ‘22 Launch

Confluent's quarterly launches provide a single resource to learn about new capabilities available on the leading data streaming platform. Other highlights include:

Independent Network Lifecycle Management: One of the biggest challenges faced when scaling data streaming workloads is the ability to provision networking resources efficiently without adding operational burdens. Confluent's new REST APIs and Terraform support for network lifecycle management promote networks to be a first-class resource, enabling organizations to scale data streaming workloads independent of network connectivity. This lets engineering teams reuse existing network connections for multiple clusters and gain granular access control of network resources through the new RBAC role for network admins, which significantly reduces manual toil.

User Login Monitoring: As a data streaming deployment grows, it becomes increasingly important to keep a close eye on who is accessing a platform and what those visitors are attempting to do with data. Confluent added user login monitoring to its extensive library of auditable events, making potential data breaches easier to spot. Now, security groups can see a full list of all users who successfully log into a Confluent Cloud account. This way, organizations can quickly find the bad actors who would otherwise be hidden within the noise of expected activity. This helps ensure no breaches occur that would expose sensitive data, cause downtime, or tarnish brand reputation.