REDWOOD CITY, Calif. and HELSINKI, Finland, March 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Instaclustr, which helps organizations deliver applications at scale by operating and supporting their open source data infrastructure, today announced it has added enterprise support for Karapace, the fully open source alternative to Confluent’s Kafka Schema Registry and REST proxy. Support for Karapace is immediately available and part of Instaclustr’s comprehensive Apache Kafka® support solutions led by dedicated Kafka experts and delivering 24/7 availability.
The Apache 2.0-licensed project, which launched in 2020 and has seen considerable adoption, is freely downloadable from GitHub. Karapace was created by Aiven shortly after Confluent announced the intention to move its Kafka Schema Registry and REST proxy from the Apache 2.0 license to a newer and more restrictive license, the Confluent Community License.
Instaclustr had supported Confluent’s Schema Registry and REST proxy but identified critical features – such as support for Protobuf message formats – that were not available under a true open source license. Karapace was vetted as a more-than-capable replacement, and Instaclustr joined Aiven in supporting the project with code and development resources. Instaclustr has already made a significant contribution to the Karapace project, including adding support for Protobuf schemas.
“Instaclustr is excited to offer support around a true open source alternative for customers who want to use Kafka Schema Registry or REST proxy without restrictive licenses and risk of lock-in,” said Paul Aubrey, VP of Product Management at Instaclustr. “By collaborating with Aiven to add support for Protobuf, we have been able to cement the Karapace project as a robust alternative across any use case. This is a significant step forward for Apache Kafka and the open source community.”
“Our aim with Karapace is to provide a truly open source alternative to Confluent’s Schema Registry and Kafka REST proxy,” said Soumya Bijjal, Senior Director Product Management at Aiven. “We are excited to see Karapace gaining traction in the open source community, with Instaclustr making a significant contribution to the code base with Protobuf support. A vast majority of our Aiven for Apache Kafka users are using Karapace in production today and we look forward to having more users of Karapace via Instaclustr through this collaboration.”
New and existing customers who would like to learn more about Karapace support can contact the Instaclustr Customer Success team for more information.
For Instaclustr Platform customers, Instaclustr is actively working to add Karapace as a full-fledged addition and fully managed replacement for Confluent’s Schema Registry and REST proxy. General availability is expected in Q1 2022. Instaclustr Platform customers who would like to preview Karapace should contact Instaclustr Support or Customer Success to discuss options.
About Instaclustr
Instaclustr helps organizations deliver applications at scale through its platform for open source technologies such as Apache Cassandra®, Apache Kafka®, Apache Spark™, Redis™, OpenSearch™, Apache ZooKeeper™, and PostgreSQL®. Instaclustr combines a complete data infrastructure environment with hands-on technology expertise to ensure ongoing performance and optimization. By removing infrastructure complexity, Instaclustr enables companies to focus internal development and operational resources on building cutting-edge, customer-facing applications at lower cost. Instaclustr customers include some of the largest and most innovative Fortune 500 companies.
For more information, visit Instaclustr.com and follow us @Instaclustr.
About Aiven
Headquartered in Helsinki and with hubs in Berlin, Boston, Paris, Toronto, Sydney and Singapore, Aiven provides managed open source data technologies, like PostgreSQL, Kafka and OpenSearch, on all major clouds. Through Aiven, developers can do what they do best: create applications. Meanwhile, Aiven does what they do best: manage cloud data infrastructure. Aiven enables customers to drive business results from open source that trigger true transformations far beyond their own backyard.
Most recently, Aiven achieved a $2B unicorn valuation and has now raised $210M total funding backed by its investors Atomico, Earlybird, First Fellow, IVP, Lifeline Ventures, Salesforce Ventures and World Innovation Lab. To learn more about Aiven, visit aiven.io and follow @aiven_io on Twitter.
