When Confluent started a cloud service in 2017, it was attempting to reduce some of the complexity linked to running a Kafka streaming data application. 

Now it launched a free tier to that cloud service. 

The company aspires to expand its market beyond large technology company consumers.

And the free tier will make it simpler for smaller companies to get started.

More About The New Tier

The new tier gives up to $50 of service a month for three months. 

Company CEO Jay Kreps states that while $50 may not sound like much, it is hundreds of gigabytes of throughput and makes it simple to get started with the tool.

Kreps mentioned that they felt like they can make this technology undoubtedly accessible. 

They can make it as simple as they can. 

He said that they want to make it something where you can get going in seconds.

And not have to spend anything to start creating an application that uses real-time streams of data,” 

Since 2011 Kafka has been available as an open-source product.

So it is free to download, install and create applications, but still needs a ton of computing and engineering sources to pull off. 

The cloud service was created to clarify that, and the free tier allows developers to get comfortable, creating a small application without a significant financial investment.

Once they get used to operating with Kafka on the free version, users can then purchase in whatever additions make sense for them, and only spend for what they use. 

While a free SaaS trial may feel like a typical kind of marketing approach, Kreps says for a service like Kafka; it is much more challenging to pull off. 

It is genuinely technically a challenging thing to give zero to elastic scale-up capabilities. 

And a large amount of engineering goes into getting that possible, Kreps explained.

Kafka- real time data cloud service adds a new tier | iTMunch

What Is Kafka?

Kafka processes vast streams of data in real-time. 

It was formerly produced inside LinkedIn and open-sourced in 2011. 

Confluent launched as a business entity on top of the open-source plan in 2014. 

In January they raised a $125 million on a $2.5 billion valuation. 

According to Crunchbase data, it has raised than $205 million till now. 

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