Apache Kafka is a leading open-source platform designed to address data exchange challenges faced by growing companies with multiple systems, enabling them to decouple interactions for greater resilience. It operates on an event-driven architecture where producers generate and send events to topics managed by brokers, which then allow consumers to subscribe and process these events. Core components include events, producers, consumers, brokers, topics, and partitions, which together facilitate scalable and reliable data streaming. Kafka Streams and connectors extend Kafka's capabilities by processing event flows and integrating with other systems, respectively. Kafka is particularly suitable for high-throughput requirements, microservices, change data capture, and real-time processing needs, making it ideal for organizations requiring robust data exchange and system connectivity. It can be implemented using hosted services or locally through Docker, depending on the specific needs and resources available.