Apache Kafka has evolved into a full-fledged distributed streaming platform for publishing, subscribing, storing, and processing streaming data at scale and in real-time. With the release of version 1.0.0, Apache Kafka is now considered Enterprise-ready with a range of enhancements, including compacted topics, fault-tolerant replication, and exactly-once processing semantics. The platform was initially designed to address the gap between low-volume messaging systems and scalable data flow in batch fashion, and it has become a central nervous system for modern digital companies, connecting all applications, services, databases, data centers, and SaaS footprint in real-time and at scale. Kafka's vision is to build a Streaming Platform that enables users to read, write, move, and process streams of data with transactional correctness at company-wide scale, and it has taken nearly a decade to turn this vision into reality.