IN PERSON: Apache Kafka® Meetup Budapest - Sept 2024

Hello Streamers! Join us for an Apache Kafka® meetup on Sept 11th from 5:30pm, hosted by Informula and Erste Bank in Europe Tower - Budapest!

📍Venue:
Erste Bank Tower
Budapest, Népfürdő u. 24-26, 1138 Hungary

**IMPORTANT: Please fill out this form 48 hours prior to the start of the event.**

🗓 Agenda:

• 5:30pm: Doors open
• 5:30pm – 6:00pm: Food, drinks and networking
• 6:00pm - 6:45 pm: Stefan Sprenger, Staff Software Developer I, Confluent (virtual)
• 6:45pm - 7:15 pm: Marcell Rózsás, Head of Data Platforms, Erste Bank Hungary
• 7:15pm - 7:45pm: Percze Gábor, Solution Architect at Informula
• 7:45pm - 9:00pm: Additional Q&A/Networking

💡 Speaker One:
Stefan Sprenger, Staff Software Developer I, Confluent (virtual)

Title of Talk:
Taming the Cost of Kafka Workloads In the Cloud

Abstract:
Cloud computing has changed how we operate and think about software: At any time, we have instant access to a seemingly unlimited capacity of compute resources and can scale our applications elastically on demand. We no longer have to procure physical machines and pay for them upfront but are billed for only those resources that we have actually used. While the usage-based pricing sounds great at first glance, it makes cost planning a complicated task, often leading to huge surprises when receiving invoices for cloud services, as revealed in numerous blog posts of authors waking up to invoice amounts that are multiple orders of magnitude higher than expected.

This talk explores the main cost factors of Kafka workloads in the cloud: compute, network, and storage. We identify their contribution to the overall cost and walk through different techniques for reducing their cost footprint by, for instance, using Kafka's follower fetching to reduce cross-AZ traffic, compression to reduce overall traffic, or scaling streaming applications ""to zero"" in the absence of incoming events to save compute resources. We focus on setups where both Kafka and associated workloads, such as Kafka Streams or Flink applications, are operated on cloud platforms.

💡 Speaker Two:
Marcell Rózsás, Head of Data Platforms, Erste Bank Hungary

Title of Talk:
ERSTE bank journey to become a data driven bank

Abstract:
This presentation explores the journey of implementing a robust data platform, beginning with a specific use-case and evolving into an enterprise-grade solution. Initially, the focus was on addressing the immediate needs with a simplified solution. However, the solution quickly transitioned real-time data platform overseeing the whole organization, emphasizing reusability and the establishment of data products. This presentation outlines the key steps, challenges, and successes in creating a versatile and future-proof data platform. We will also showcase the most important use cases currently in development and discuss our future strategy for the platform.

Bio:
Marcell Rózsás is a solution architect at EBH, working on various projects across the entire banking domain. With a passion for innovative technology solutions, he has been working on developing real-time data access capabilities since the beginning.

💡 Speaker Three:
Percze Gábor, Solution Architect at Informula

Title of Talk:
Integration Challenges, Best Practices and Solutions

Abstract:
This presentation will demonstrate the practical aspects and challenges of integrating Kafka into banking enterprise architecture. Through specific examples, we will illustrate the successful deployment and operation of Kafka in the banking sector and share our experiences and solutions from real projects. We will share best practices for data collection, processing, and analysis, and demonstrate how we have integrated Kafka with existing systems. We will discuss in detail the design of Kafka-based architectures, collaboration with legacy systems, and ensuring scalability and reliability, scaling, data security, and compliance issues. We will cover technical challenges, potential solutions, and demonstrate real-time data processing workflows, compliance requirements management, and data security issues.

Bio:
Gábor serves as a Solution Architect at Informula, focusing on Kafka streaming architecture integration and is the main architect of the Erste Bank streaming platform implementation and data-driven transformation. With this project, Informula is introducing a unique service to the Hungarian market, pioneering in the domestic banking and financial sector. Gábor is skilled in full-stack software development, AWS- based software architecture, and team leadership, and he holds an AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate credential.