Kafka Use Case: Monsanto

We'll have food/drink at 6:30, and begin the presentation at 7:00pm.

Many enterprises have a large technical debt in legacy applications hosted in on-premises data centers. There is a strong desire to modernize and move to a cloud-based infrastructure, but the world won't stop for you to transition. Existing applications need to be supported and enhanced; data from legacy platforms is required to make decisions that drive the business. On the other hand, data from cloud-based applications does not exist in a vacuum. Legacy applications need access to these cloud data sources and vice versa.

Can an enterprise have it both ways? Can new applications be built in the cloud while existing applications are maintained in a private data center?

Monsanto has adopted a cloud-first mentality...today most new development is focused on the cloud. However, this transition did not happen overnight. Bob Lehmann will share his experience building and implementing a Kafka-based cross-data-center "data hub" to facilitate the move to the cloud...in the process, kick-starting Monsanto's transition from batch to stream processing. Details include an overview of the challenges involved in transitioning to the cloud, a deep dive into the cross-data-center stream platform architecture and a discussion of ongoing data platform development at Monsanto.

About the speaker

Bob Lehmann is an architect on the Data Platform team at Monsanto, where he leads efforts to both modernize enterprise technology and transition to the cloud. Bob has held a number of positions in IT and engineering working with data ranging from high-volume sensor data to enterprise data (and everything in between). He holds a master's degree in electrical engineering from Missouri University of Science and Technology.

Food and drink are sponsored by Monsanto. The meeting space is sponsored by Cloudera.