Event streaming is the digital equivalent of the human body’s central nervous system. It is the technological foundation for the ‘always-on’ world where businesses are increasingly software-defined and automated, and where the user of software is more software.
In simple technical words, event streaming is the practice of capturing data in real-time from event sources like databases, sensors, mobile devices, cloud services, and software applications in the form of streams of events; storing these event streams durably for later retrieval; manipulating, processing, and reacting to the event streams in real-time as well as retrospectively; and routing the event streams to different destination technologies as needed. Event streaming thus ensures a continuous flow and interpretation of data so that the right information is at the right place, at the right time.
What can we use event streaming for ?
Event streaming is applied to a wide variety of use cases across industries and organizations. Its many examples include:
- To process payments and financial transactions in real-time, such as in stock exchanges, banks, and insurances.
- To track and monitor cars, trucks, fleets, and shipments in real-time, such as in logistics and the automotive industry.
- To continuously capture and analyze sensor data from IoT devices or other equipment, such as in factories and wind parks.
- To collect and immediately react to customer interactions and orders, such as in retail, the hotel and travel industry, and mobile applications.
- To monitor patients in hospital care and predict changes in condition to ensure timely treatment in emergencies.
- To connect, store, and make available data produced by different divisions of a company.
- To serve as the foundation for data platforms, event-driven architectures, and microservices.
