Confluent Launches OEM Program to Help ISV and MSP Partners Build Data Streaming into Their Offerings

Confluent also discloses investments in two regional systems integration partners that are developing cutting-edge data integration and migration solutions and practices.

Streaming technology developer Confluent has launched an OEM sales program to recruit managed service providers, cloud service providers and independent software vendors to expand their software and services offerings with the Confluent platform.

The new program provides managed service providers (MSPs), communications service providers (CSPs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) with a license to globally redistribute or embed Confluent technology, as well as project review and development assistance, product certification, technical support and other benefits.

Confluent also announced today that it has invested in two regional systems integrators, Onibex and Psyncopate, which provide data integration and systems migration services around Confluent’s streaming data platform. The investment amounts were not disclosed.

“It’s a way to expand partnerships. We want to expand our shared channel,” Paul Mac Farland, Confluent’s channel chief, told CRN“We can’t take on the $60 billion streaming market on our own.”

(Related: Meeting the Growing Demand for Data: CRN Big Data 100 2024)

Confluent, founded in 2014 and headquartered in Mountain View, California, is building on the open-source Apache Kafka technology that Confluent’s founders originally developed. The company, which is hosting Current 2024 this week in Austin, Texas, offers the Confluent software platform and the Confluent Cloud service.

The company expanded its channel efforts last year, including the launch of the Connect with Confluent program to help software partners integrate their products with the Confluent platform, the Accelerate with Confluent and Build with Confluent programs for systems integration partners, and an initiative to recruit and assist partners who are helping customers upgrade from Kafka to Confluent.

The latest program is aimed at cloud service providers and MSPs (Managed Service Providers) that build streaming services based on the open source Apache Kafka software, as well as independent software vendors that build software that includes either Kafka or the free Community edition of the Confluent platform.

However, open-source Kafka-based products and services do not provide the scalability or clustering capabilities that many large companies and organizations need today — especially as the growing wave of AI and generative AI applications increases the need for real-time data for mission-critical applications, Kamal Brar (pictured), Confluent’s senior vice president, Worldwide ISV and APAC, told CRN.

“When (companies and organizations) scale these systems, they’re challenged by the operational burden. They’re challenged by the engineering complexity of really building a cluster service that’s going to scale to thousands, maybe tens of thousands of servers. The complexity of managing these services is difficult,” Brar said.

And the product update and security patch cycles for open-source products like Kafka may not be robust enough for many enterprise customers, Brar added. “All of these challenges make it very difficult to deliver a true enterprise product that’s world-class,” he said. “And that’s a big change that we’re seeing on both the CSP/MSP side and the ISV side.”

Their own agenda

Brar said Confluent already has a number of ISV partners whose software is integrated with the Confluent platform. But he said the company is launching this new program to meet the unique engineering needs of OEM and MSP partners.

“We’ve seen demand really accelerate over the last two years as we’ve introduced some of these partnerships, and now we’ve reached a point where it’s a significant part of our business,” Brar said. “I think that’s why we decided to create a separate team focused on that.”

One such partner is software developer Mindgate Solutions. “Processing over 7 billion real-time payment transactions per month for leading financial institutions around the world comes with exceptional performance expectations,” said George Sam, co-founder and business head of Mindgate, in a statement.

Sam said that by leveraging Confluent, “we are ensuring that our RTP UPI (Unified Payments Real-Time Interface) platform can support the growing demand for real-time transactions with unmatched performance and reliability. With this partnership, we are reaffirming our commitment to delivering innovative, scalable and resilient payment solutions to customers around the world, underlining our commitment to delivering cutting-edge, robust solutions globally.”

The company says that with the new OEM program now operational, partners can develop and launch real-time and Kafka products to get to market faster and monetize streaming data demand with reduced risk.

The program offers design review, development support, and expertise to help partners embed data streaming into their software and services. It also provides Confluent certifications that support partners’ data streaming offerings, flexible commercial terms to match how partners sell, and technical support to help partners with customer inquiries.

“I think there’s a huge opportunity for this market to continue to grow,” Brar said. In a press release, the company cited research from ISG Software that predicted that by 2026, more than three-quarters of standard enterprise IT infrastructure will involve streaming data and event processing.

Investments in regional system integrators

Confluent said its investments in Onibex and Psyncopate, members of the Build with Confluent channel program, are intended to meet growing demand for services related to Confluent’s data streaming platform – particularly data integration and legacy migration projects.

Onibex, based in The Woodlands, Texas, offers its proprietary One Connect solution and related services that leverage Confluent to connect SAP system data with other operating systems in real time. Psyncopate, based in Brea, California, offers services to migrate customers from legacy TIBCO messaging systems to the Confluent platform.

Mac Farland said SAP and TIBCO have “some of the most valuable data sets in the world,” and Onibex and Psyncopate have developed the expertise and intellectual property to leverage that data. With the investment, Confluent expects both companies to continue to advance their intellectual property and use cases, make their offerings more repeatable, and scale their real-time data practices.

“By connecting Confluent and SAP with ‘One Connect,’ organizations can easily adopt event-driven architectures to decouple system integration and democratize data across the enterprise, enabling real-time user experiences and decision-making,” said Gustavo Estrada, CEO and Chief Architect of Onibex, in a statement. “Confluent’s investment will go toward expanding our ‘One Connect’ platform, making seamless data integration between SAP and Confluent Cloud a reality in hours.”

“As we help leading organizations modernize their legacy data infrastructure for real-time streaming data, we have strategically deepened our partnership with Confluent,” said Tony Giang, Psyncopate founder and chief technology officer, also in a statement. “This funding will allow us to expand our pipeline of streaming data migration projects while continuing to deliver seamless integration services to our customers.”

Mac Farland added that Confluent sales representatives will likely also work with representatives from Onibex and Psyncopate to explore joint opportunities.

The channel chief said he doesn’t think Confluence’s investment in two systems integrators will cause conflicts between the vendor and its partners, noting that Onibex and Psyncopate offer very specialized expertise that other partners, including larger systems integrators, could benefit from.

“We think it’s beneficial and additive to the broader partner community,” Mac Farland said. “It’s a win-win for everyone—including the customer.” He said Confluent wants the “majority” of its customer services to come from partners and that the vendor isn’t interested in growing its services practice.