Apache Flink has gained significant popularity due to its unified stream and batch processing framework, which provides high resource efficiency, massive throughput with low latency, and robust state handling. The platform's flexibility allows it to be tailored to a wide range of workloads, including streaming and batch workloads. Apache Flink offers four different APIs, each tailored to different users and use cases, providing fine-grained control over data processing. The platform unifies stream and batch processing, allowing for consistent semantics across real-time and historical data processing use cases. Additionally, Flink has been hardened in production with various features such as a flexible metrics system, extensive observability, and savepoints. Its integration with Apache Kafka provides a seamless experience for stream processing, leveraging the latter's core streaming data storage layer. Many leading innovators have adopted both Kafka and Flink in their data stack, making it an attractive choice for organizations looking to build powerful data streaming architectures.