Kafka offers significant benefits for real-time businesses, but as usage increases, so does its complexity, often leading to higher costs and operational challenges. To address these issues, organizations can implement strategies such as using Virtual Clusters to provide logical isolation without increasing infrastructure, reducing topic sprawl with centralized and filtered access, and replacing custom code with protocol mediation to streamline integrations. Additionally, applying consistent access control at the API layer and centralizing discovery through AsyncAPIs can enhance security and promote resource reuse. Kong Event Gateway facilitates these improvements, enabling businesses to manage Kafka like a platform, maintaining performance while reducing infrastructure and complexity.