Confluent launches Private Cloud for simplified, scalable & secured streaming
Cloud is complicated.
But of course it shouldn’t be. On the face of it (and according to all the promises made by the hyperscalers and the cloud-native advocate glitterati) cloud computing comes with the simplicity factor baked in so that scalability and managed services are low-hanging fruit for users to grasp. But in reality, deployment and ongoing management complexities stem from misconfiguration, misalignment of provisioning and the miscalculation of costs, among other woes.
Data streaming platform company Confluent says it is on a mission to change these dynamics with an offering that pairs simplicity with on-premises security to scale data streaming across even the most heavily regulated businesses.
Confluent Private Cloud
Detailed at the company’s Current 2025 conference in New Orleans this week, Confluent Private Cloud is a way to deploy, manage and govern streaming data on private infrastructure. The technology bids to solve the challenge of scaling Apache Kafka in on-premises environments in heavily regulated industries by bringing Confluent’s most advanced cloud-native features behind the firewall.
Confluent Private Cloud, now generally available, helps organisations scale faster, adapt quickly and make decisions with real-time confidence to stay ahead of the competition.
Why is scaling Apache Kafka so tough?
Because users will need to navigate the inherent complexity in the technology resulting from risky rebalancing of partitions for both adding and removing brokers (servers within a Kafka cluster that store data, handle requests and provide the core functionality of the system) and the need to handle tight coupling of storage and compute, which leads to inefficient resource use and the need for over-provisioning.
Teams will look at procedures such as manual rebalancing (to scale a cluster up or down), but this means cluster partitions must be carefully migrated and rebalanced across brokers to ensure even workload distribution. Because these resource-intensive processes are so complex, they are of course error error-prone. Kafka lacks any extensive ability to exhibit self-healing functionality and cannot automatically recover from issues like data hotspots or uneven capacity distribution.
Because software engineering and data science teams have such a mountain to climb to surmount these technology hurdles and more, compliance becomes flaky, brittle and often broken. Confluent thinks it has an answer.
“Real-time data is the key to unlocking business growth. It’s what helps organisations modernise and stay ahead,” said Shaun Clowes, chief product officer at Confluent. “The challenge is that strict regulations can make it harder to scale data streaming across the business. With Confluent Private Cloud, you get the best of both worlds – the agility and simplicity of the cloud with the security and control of your own private infrastructure.”
Clowes and team point out that enterprises are under growing pressure to unlock the value of real-time data, yet platform engineering teams face a constant trade-off i.e. do they move fast and risk compliance? Or do they enforce oversight and slow progress?
Privacy, security & compliance
He says that so often, choosing one over the other leaves companies unable to operate at their full potential. What’s needed is the ability to deliver the efficiency and agility of the cloud while maintaining the strict privacy, security and compliance requirements that keep many workloads on private infrastructure.
“The need for real-time data has continued to grow, but privacy and compliance requirements remain a major challenge to scaling it,” said Stewart Bond, vice president of data intelligence and integration software at IDC. “Businesses must look for solutions that help them strike a balance between delivering a fast self-service experience like a cloud provider and maintaining centralised control of their private infrastructure. With the right strategy, teams can move quickly and confidently, whether their data is in the cloud or on-prem.”
This technology is purpose-built for platform teams at large enterprises, at service providers and in regulated industries tasked with delivering a centralised, secure data streaming service to a diverse set of users. With the launch of Confluent Private Cloud, Confluent says it now offers a solution for any infrastructure, wherever the data is.
When only on-prem will do
The data streaming gurus at Confluent say that the company’s Confluent Private Cloud service provides a route to delivering cloud-native automation, performance and management for organisations that must operate on-premises.
Confluent Private Cloud Gateway enables real-time data to move smoothly, even during migrations, policy changes, or other infrastructure updates. It provides a smart network that securely routes traffic and enforces centrally managed policies, streamlining data movement during failures.
Unified Stream Manager (USM) centralises compliance, data tracking and schema management for both Confluent Platform and Confluent Cloud. It simplifies audits and troubleshooting in hybrid environments, helping platform teams stay compliant and monitor data as streaming scales across the organisation. Intelligent Replication delivers up to 10x performance for data streaming at scale in private infrastructure.
