Managing a data center involves complex tasks, including monitoring electrical power, cooling systems, and network bandwidth, which are crucial for maintaining smooth operations. The blog post discusses the role of automated monitoring in this context, highlighting the use of tools like Logstash, Apache Kafka, and Elasticsearch to streamline data collection and alert systems. Moreover, it introduces ksqlDB as a solution for integrating and enriching data from different sources, such as power consumption readings and customer records, through user-defined functions (UDFs) and user-defined table functions (UDTFs). By employing ksqlDB, data can be transformed and enriched upstream, ensuring only the final version reaches the database, thus enhancing efficiency and data privacy. The post details a practical example of using ksqlDB to merge and enrich data from a smart electrical panel and customer information, demonstrating how this approach can improve data visibility for customers while safeguarding privacy. This system ultimately frees personnel from monotonous tasks, allowing them to focus on more meaningful activities within the data center.