At the API Summit 2024, the Kong Premium Technology Partner Program was announced with Confluent as an initial participant, highlighting the convergence of data streaming and APIs. This partnership has advanced with Kong joining the Connect with Confluent technology partner program, facilitating the integration of Kong Konnect and Confluent Cloud to enhance Apache Kafka® data streaming with advanced API management. This integration uses an event gateway pattern to manage exposure and consumption control by implementing authentication, rate limiting, and real-time monitoring through Kong Gateway's platform-agnostic and scalable infrastructure. Confluent Cloud, built by the original creators of Kafka, offers a fully managed, cloud-native streaming platform that outperforms open-source Kafka with features like elastic scalability and enterprise-grade security. The integration of Kong Gateway with Confluent Cloud enables the transformation of REST requests into Kafka messages, providing standardized access while safeguarding the Kafka infrastructure. This collaboration empowers organizations to build resilient, scalable event streaming applications by consolidating robust policies and traffic management strategies.