Real-time intelligence is no longer a nice-to-have, but necessary to attract customers and build future-proofed retail operations In the last 15 years, we’ve seen slow but significant advances in AI when it comes to retail. We can all remember when AI-powered “bots” or virtual assistants began showing up on most major retail websites to assist with consumer questions and complaints.

The Aiven Platform with fully managed, scalable open source data technologies is now available on Oracle Cloud Marketplace. We're excited to announce the Aiven Platform which offers fully managed, scalable open-source data technologies is now available on the Oracle Cloud Marketplace. This collaboration allows Oracle Cloud customers to effortlessly access a wide range of popular open-source data technologies, including PostgreSQL, Apache Kafka and OpenSearch, with Aiven.

There's a new metrics service in town – Aiven for Metrics provides Prometheus metrics powered by Thanos. Aiven recently added a new service to our offerings: Aiven for Metrics is now in Early Availability. Similar to Aiven for M3, Aiven for Metrics is a Prometheus-compatible solution powered by Thanos, a CNCF project aimed at providing highly available Prometheus metrics with long term storage capabilities.

If retailers want to build trust with customers, they must be transparent about data collection and usage. This blog provides actionable guidance on gaining valuable insights from data while protecting customer privacy. The retail sector's increasing use of real-time data analytics is a double-edged sword in our privacy-first world. On one hand, it is a promising new revenue opportunity that leverages what retailers, by default, can already access.

This blog examines how smart retailers are blending the latest technology with their traditional brick-and-mortar stores to deliver outstanding customer experiences.

Tiered Storage reduces storage costs, increases operational flexibility, and provides unlimited data retention scalability Aiven announces the general availability of Tiered Storage in Aiven for Apache Kafka. Tiered storage enables Apache Kafka to seamlessly move older, less frequently accessed data to a lower cost storage tier within Kafka. This enables infinite data retention while substantially reducing storage costs and improving performance and operational efficiency.

FSIs face rising compliance demands, squeezing budgets and cybersecurity risks. Open-source tech and careful vendor selection can mitigate these challenges. As explored in our two most recent blogs, changing compliance regulations and policies by specific regions and countries are having a significant impact on financial services institutions (FSIs).

BigQuery continuous queries enable the reverse ETL pattern. You can now stream your enriched data from BigQuery back to the operational data layer using Aiven for Apache Kafka. BigQuery enables customers to quickly generate insights about their data. Its native integration with AI tools allows organizations to transform row assets into valuable information that can be used to generate more accurate decisions, streamlining companies' growth.

Simplify cost management and drive cost reductions across all in-house and managed cloud services.

The Apache Kafka community is pleased to announce the release of Apache Kafka 3.8.0. As a release manager for this version, I want to personally thank all users and the team of 200+ contributors for the release of Apache Kafka 3.8.0. This was truly a community effort to bring new features and improvements to an open source streaming platform used by thousands of organizations worldwide.