Confluent To Spur Partner Integrations, Development With $200M Investment

The pledged investment, spread over the next three years, will be used primarily to work with ISVs, system integrators, managed service providers and others in the company’s global partner ecosystem to make Confluent’s data streaming platform a key component of their solution and service offerings.

Confluent is committing to invest $200 million over the next three years to expand the reach and capabilities of the company’s global partner ecosystem around its data streaming platform, Confluent said Wednesday.

The funding boost is particularly focused on getting partners: cloud service providers, ISVs, system integrators, technology partners and managed service providers, to either embed Confluent’s data streaming technology within their own products and services to create new revenue-generating solutions or develop native integrations between partner offerings and the Confluent platform.

Some of the financial resources will go toward co-developing data streaming use cases with partners and go-to-market plans around those solutions. Confluent is also looking to expand within key geographies—such as the Middle East—with key regional partners, said Kamal Brar, senior vice president of worldwide ISV & APAC, in an exclusive interview with CRN.

The wave of artificial intelligence software development sweeping through the industry is a major driver behind Confluent’s increased channel spending. AI, including generative AI and agentic AI applications, need a steady stream of data—often in real-time—to perform their tasks.

“The obvious path for us is we see a lot of momentum in AI,” Brar (pictured) said. “Central to that is, of course, the data streaming capabilities you need, the real-time data capabilities. Some of the core [AI] engineering use cases rely on real-time data.”

Brar said that in some cases the real-time data processing component of the data technology stack used to support AI projects isn’t as well developed as it can be.

“And so we’re very eager [about] accelerating the development of those capabilities across our partners,” he said. “We see that as a very important, critical component.”

Confluent, headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., develops its data streaming platform to manage and process the increasing volumes of what it calls “data in motion” generated by today’s operational IT systems, such as online retail web sites and financial trading applications.

The Confluent platform was originally based on the open-source Apache Kafka technology that was developed by Confluent’s founders. But the Confluent platform of today has developed far beyond that technology.

Recent Channel Initiatives

Over the last two years the company has been expanding its channel efforts, including launching 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 integrator partners, and an initiative to enlist and assist partners who help customers upgrade from Kafka to Confluent.

Brar said that over the last 12 months about 20 percent of Confluent’s business was sourced through channel partners.

In September 2024 Confluent launched an OEM channel program to recruit managed service providers, cloud service providers and independent software vendors to build the Confluent platform into their software and service offerings.

The newly announced $200 million investment in Confluent’s global partner system doubles down on those efforts and reflects some realignments in light of AI market demands, Brar said. He added that the $200 million sum is above what the company had originally intended to spend on its channel efforts.

“We’re seeing more and more partners having a real focus on expanding their core capabilities around data streaming” and extending those capabilities to new integrations and use cases, he said, citing data links to AI large language models (LLMs) as an example. “That’s become the most obvious area of collaboration [and] a very, I would say, strong point of validation for us.”

Allium Data, a Boulder, Colo.-based developer of a blockchain-based database and related software for the insurance industry, has integrated its platform with Confluent Cloud to tap into its data streaming functionality.

“We’re on a mission to drive trust and transparency in blockchain, and that is only achievable with quick, easy access to real-time, reliable data,” said Allium co-founder and CEO Ethan Chan, in a statement. “Confluent enables us to seamlessly connect diverse data sources, from blockchains and core financial systems to cloud-based analytics platforms. With the technology and expertise provided by Confluent and its partners, we’ve built a high-performance data backbone that enables us to grow rapidly and deliver trusted blockchain insights to more customers faster.”

Expanding Ties To Global IT Service Providers

This year Confluent has been expanding its relationship with global IT services provider Infosys to develop generative AI and agentic AI solutions powered by Confluent.

In February Confluent established a strategic partnership with Jio Platforms, a multinational technology company headquartered in Mumbai, India, to provide Confluent Cloud real-time data services through Jio Cloud Services for real-time and GenAI uses cases. And in April Confluent announced that sccc by stc, a leading cloud services provider in Saudi Arabia, had joined the Confluent OEM program, providing Confluent’s data streaming as a managed service in that country.

Also in April Confluent and professional services provider EY struck an alliance to help EY clients develop real-time, event-driven applications that incorporate the Confluent technology.

“If you look at any of the large services companies today, they’re all grappling with, ‘How do we provide a strong data foundation to build these agentic capabilities to serve AI use cases for our customers?’” Brar said. “Every single one of them will require a real-time data capability—and that’s where we’re heavily focused on investing our dollars in terms of accelerating that.”

Confluent also has continued to work with leading technology partners. In February the company expanded its alliance with data platform giant Databricks, developing a streamlined, bidirectional data flow between Confluent’s Tableflow (which converts Kafka logs into Delta Lake tables) and Databrick’s Unity Catalog – a move that the two companies said simplifies the integration of operational and analytical systems.