Hi, I'm Derek. I'm the CEO and a co-founder at Factor House. We build tools for the next generation of Enterprise engineers.
I started building production platforms with Apache Kafka in 2012. Now my team and I work exclusively on our Kafka management and monitoring tool, Kpow.
Kpow allows your team to focus on delivery by giving them immediate, enterprise-grade access to the Kafka metrics, controls, and data that they need.
Let's dive right in. The Top 5 reasons to use Kpow are: Simplicity, Security, Economy, Enterprise, and Us.
TLDR; Kpow is the simple, secure, commercially supported, enterprise-ready Kafka toolkit that empowers your team and saves your organisation time and money.
Simplicity
At Factor House, we like to make things simple.
Kpow is the all-in-one, fully featured Kafka® toolkit that ships in a single Docker container (or JAR file).
Kpow has a transparent, per cluster price, with unlimited features and users for all paid licenses.
Kpow requires zero dependencies beyond our application container and at least one Kafka Cluster.
Kpow manages multiple Kafka Clusters, Schema Registries, and Connect Clusters in one installation.
Kpow supports Kafka 1.0+, Confluent Cloud, Aiven, Instaclustr, and is compatible with Red Panda.
Security
Kpow is a web-based application built for the Enterprise; it is not a desktop application.
To sum up quickly, security is at the heart of Kpow, and if you want to make your CIO happy (and your life easier), this is what they need to know:
| Kpow ✅ | Desktop Application ❌ | |
|---|---|---|
| Network | Web App deployed on-premise or cloud. User requires no direct network access to Kafka. No distribution of bootstrap URL or credentials. HTTPS supported out of the box. | Desktop App deployed remotely on user machine. User requires direct network access to Kafka. Requires distribution of bootstrap URL + credentials. Encryption depends on selected protocol. |
| Authentication | Industry standard SSO options including SAML, LDAP, OpenID, and Okta. Standard Web App management of Kafka credentials. | Often no support for Authentication. Kafka credentials distributed to remote users. |
| Authorization | Role Based Access Control for fine-grained control of user actions. Multi-Tenancy for fine-grained control of Kafka visibility. | Often no support for Authorization. No support for Multi-Tenancy. |
| Configuration | Contained and managed within your orchestration framework of choice. | Distributed to end user machines. |
| Data Governance | Audit log of user interaction retained in local topic in your cluster. Data masking of PII data within topic query results. | Often no support for Data Masking or Audit Log. It is not possible to offer Data Governance when distributing Kafka credentials. |
Economy
"Life saver. We got to the bottom of something in hours that could have dragged on for days" -- Alex Hilton, FX Engineering Manager, Airwallex
Engineers are expensive. Kpow makes engineers more efficient.
Having the right tool for your team will:
- Save engineering time, effort, and budget.
- Reduce time-to-resolution for Kafka issues.
- Improve team confidence with Kafka.
- Help engineers new to Kafka learn concepts quickly.
Enterprise
Kpow has been in production use since 2018. Our customers span every industry from Finance to Utilities, from startups to planet-sized companies.
Kpow is built from the ground up to be suitable for modern deployment and management strategies and is deployable in every cloud and on-premise.
With Kpow, no data leaves your organization - Kpow stores all information in local topics within your primary Kafka cluster.
Kpow seamlessly integrates with standard Enterprise frameworks and platforms like Slack, Prometheus, SAML, LDAP, and more.
For an example integration, see our guide to Kafka Alerting with Kpow, Prometheus and Alertmanager.
Us!
Kpow is the nexus of decades experience in enterprise development with a decade of specialization building systems with Apache Kafka.
Our insight is gained through the projects we've delivered, the meetups we run, the conferences we attend and speak at, and our conversations with users.
The joy of working on Kpow is talking to engineering teams around the world, understanding the issues they face, and shipping features that meet their needs.
We are a dedicated team with a passion for Apache Kafka, we work closely with our users, and we ship features every month.
We offer Enterprise support agreements where needed, but we welcome all engineers onto our our slack to chat Kafka, raise issues, or share ideas.
If your organisation uses Kafka, you need Kpow. If you like what you see you can start a free trial anytime.