Life Is But A Stream

• Ep 15 - Inside Saudi Arabia's Real-Time AI Evolution

  Saudi Arabia is rapidly emerging as a global AI powerhouse, a transformation fueled by a fundamental shift in how data is managed, processed, and activated. Mohamed Ahmed Anwar, General Manager of Presales at (sccc by stc) Saudi Cloud Computing Company, explains why they adopted Confluent’s data streaming platform: cyber resilience and security, strong governance, and scalability paired with simplified operations at enterprise scale. Anwar unpacks why data streaming is foundational to modern AI, from launching model-as-a-service offerings to enabling agentic architectures. He highlights how sccc by stcs strategic partnership with Confluent delivers value extending far beyond open source Apache Kafka®, including connectors,  governance with schemas, Kubernetes-based deployment, self-balancing clusters, and Cluster Linking that make enterprise operations tractable without an “army of engineers”.You’ll Learn:How sccc by stc uses Confluent to deliver a managed data streaming platform that powers AI use cases while maintaining performance, security, and control across public and private sectors Why data governance, local compliance, and operational scalability are are critical within Saudi ArabiaWhat makes real-time platforms indispensable for enhanced customer experience and operational agilityHow data streaming transforms traditional batch into dynamic, scalable AI architectures (e.g., RAG and agentic systems) by ensuring fresh, trustworthy data  About the Guest:Mohamed Ahmed Anwar is a seasoned technology leader with over 18 years of experience driving innovation across the IT industry. He has held leadership roles at global tech giants including Microsoft, Dell Technologies, and Pure Storage, where he led complex digital transformation initiatives with a focus on delivering business impact. Currently, he serves as the General Manager of Presales at sccc by stc, where he drives strategic efforts to empower Saudi organizations through advanced cloud services, accelerating their growth and digital modernization.Throughout his career, Anwar has led initiatives in data analytics, cloud adoption, and artificial intelligence, enabling organizations to harness the power of emerging technologies. His passion for mentorship and team development is reflected in his dedication to nurturing talent and building resilient, future-ready teams. Anwar is driven by a belief in the transformative potential of technology, consistently working to bridge strategic vision with practical execution to deliver meaningful, lasting impact. Guest Highlight: “Batch computing is like getting your water from a water well. You have a bucket and are governed by the size of the bucket and by the speed and the strength in your arms while in the data stream. On a streaming platform, you have a stream of data. You govern it. You know how exactly you will direct this stream of data, how you will store it and so on. This actually affected the time-to-value for our customers.”Episode Timestamps:1:00 — Guest introduction & company overview5:55 — Segment 1: Data Streaming Goodness14:05 — Segment 2: Beyond the Stream26:50 — Segment 3: Quick Bytes30:15 — Joseph’s Top TakeawaysDive Deeper into Data Streaming:EP1—Stream On: Unleashing Innovation with Data StreamingEP2—Processing Without Pause: Continuous Stream Processing and Apache Flink®EP3—The Connective Tissue: Shift Left to turn Data Chaos to ClarityLinks & Resources:Connect with Joseph: @thedatagiantsccc by stc: https://www.youtube.com/@sccc_bystc/videosJoseph’s LinkedInAnwar’s LinkedInLearn more at Confluent.ioOur Sponsor:  Your data shouldn’t be a problem to manage. It should be your superpower. The Confluent data streaming platform transforms organizations with trustworthy, real-time data that seamlessly spans your entire environment and powers innovation across every use case. Create smarter, deploy faster, and maximize efficiency with a true data streaming platform from the pioneers in data streaming. Learn more at confluent.io. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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• LIVE from Current NOLA: Scaling Streaming in the AI Era

  From the heart of the expo hall at Current NOLA, this special episode drops you into the conversations, energy, and the breakthroughs as they happened.Host, Joseph Morais, and co-host, Adi Polak talk with data streaming leaders and community voices to unpack how teams are using Apache Kafka® and Apache Flink® to power low-latency, AI-ready applications—covering patterns from usage-based billing and hybrid operations to cost efficiency and streaming governance. You’ll also hear how shift-left processing and governance make AI-ready data possible at scale. Plus, we break down key launches, including Queues for Kafka, Confluent Private Cloud, the Real-Time Context Engine for AI, and more.You’ll learn:How modern architectures power real-time billing, entitlements, and fraud detectionWhy exactly-once processing and stateful workloads matter at scaleHow Unified Stream Manager and Confluent Private Cloud simplify hybrid, multi-cluster operations with a single pane of glassHow Real-Time Context Engine serves governed, low-latency context to  agentic AI via MCPThe Hosts:Joseph Morais, Technical Champion, Confluent Adi Polak, Director of Advocacy and Developer Experience Engineering, ConfluentThe Guests:Cosmo Wolfe, CTO, Metronome  Kevin Balaji, Sr. Director, Product Marketing, ConfluentAdam Bellemare, Principal Technologist, ConfluentSam Barker, Principal Software Engineer, IBMOlena Kutsenko, Staff Developer Advocate, ConfluentScott Haines, O’Reilly Author and OSS EducatorGuest Highlights: “If your company is shifting to be more nimble with monetization and especially if you're switching to more of a consumption based model, then the underlying systems have to be real time to support that.” — Cosmo Wolfe, Metronome“So many customers out there…they are running in Amazon and in their data center and somewhere else. They're all looking for ways to monitor and manage all these different clusters in one way.” — Kevin Balaji, Confluent “There's a reason we call it time travel—because we're going back to a prior point in history to replay data and do something else with it.” — Scott Haines, O’Reilly Author and OSS EducatorEpisode Timestamps: 01:00 — Cosmo Wolfe, CTO, Metronome 17:10 —  Kevin Balaji, Sr. Director, Product Marketing, Confluent28:40 — Adam Bellemare, Principal Technologist, Confluent43:15 — Sam Barker, Principal Software Engineer, IBM50:30 — Olena Kutsenko, Staff Developer Advocate, Confluent01:05:00 — Scott Haines, O’Reilly Author and OSS EducatorDive Deeper into Data Streaming:EP1—Stream On: Unleashing Innovation with Data Streaming | Life Is But A StreamEP2—Processing Without Pause: Continuous Stream Processing and Apache Flink® | Life Is But A StreamEP3—The Connective Tissue: Shift Left to turn Data Chaos to Clarity | Life Is But A StreamLinks & Resources:Connect with Joseph: https://www.youtube.com/@thedatagiantJoseph’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/thedatagiantAdi’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/polak-adi/Keynote: Building Intelligent Systems on Real-time DataWatch Current On Demand: https://current.confluent.io/archive/2025/new-orleans?utm_source=simplecast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_id=tm.content_life-is-but-a-streamContext-Driven AI Reigned Supreme at Current New Orleans: https://www.confluent.io/blog/context-driven-ai-current-new-orleans/?utm_source=simplecast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_id=tm.content_life-is-but-a-streamBuilding Event-Driven Microservice (2E): https://www.confluent.io/resources/ebook/building-event-driven-microservices-2e/?utm_source=simplecast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_id=tm.content_life-is-but-a-streamLearn more at Confluent.ioOur Sponsor:  Your data shouldn’t be a problem to manage. It should be your superpower. The Confluent data streaming platform transforms organizations with trustworthy, real-time data that seamlessly spans your entire environment and powers innovation across every use case. Create smarter, deploy faster, and maximize efficiency with a true data streaming platform from the pioneers in data streaming. Learn more at confluent.io. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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• Ep 14 - Modern Monetization: How Metronome Powers Real-Time Billing with Confluent

  How quickly can your business turn usage into revenue? For modern software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies, speed is a competitive advantage. Metronome is redefining what’s possible with a real-time monetization engine that scales to billions of events per day—all powered by Confluent’s data streaming platform and Apache Kafka®.In this episode, Cosmo Wolfe, CTO at Metronome, joins Joseph Morais to discuss how real-time data streaming enables everything from sub-second billing and fraud prevention to new pricing models and product-led growth. He explains how Metronome processes tens of thousands of invoices per second and billions of events per day, all while keeping 90% of their engineering team focused on building features, not managing operations. You’ll learn:How Metronome achieves second-level latency for billing and fraud detectionWhy real-time monetization requires a data streaming foundationHow Confluent’s managed data streaming platform lets engineering teams focused on innovation, not infrastructure What “time to revenue” means—and why it’s the new north star for SaaS growthIf your business depends on billing, pricing, or product usage data, this episode shows how to turn streaming into a strategic advantage.About the Guest:Cosmo Wolfe is the Chief Technology Officer at Metronome. He is interested in using technology to unlock data, and is experienced in building and managing web, security and identity systems and teams. Cosmo is currently reinventing billing at Metronome.Guest Highlights: “We are processing events on a second-level latency end to end. So if an event occurs in your business, it’ll show up on your end customer’s invoice in sub-seconds.”“We think of the core data infrastructure at Metronome as having two axes—time to revenue, which is basically that second-level latency, and the cardinality of data we can support.”“When you’re making monetization a core part of your product experience, it requires really up-to-date data. And so it requires Metronome, and thus requires Confluent.”Episode Timestamps: *(00:45) -  Metronome and the Importance of Real-Time Data*(05:45) - Data Streaming Goodness*(25:25) - Beyond the Stream*(38:00) - Quick Bytes*(42:35) - Joseph’s Top 3 TakeawaysDive Deeper into Data Streaming:EP1—Stream On: Unleashing Innovation with Data Streaming | Life Is But A StreamEP2—Processing Without Pause: Continuous Stream Processing and Apache Flink® | Life Is But A StreamEP3—The Connective Tissue: Shift Left to turn Data Chaos to Clarity | Life Is But A StreamLinks & Resources:Connect with Joseph: @thedatagiantMetronome: @getmetronomeJoseph’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/thedatagiantCosmo’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/cosmowolfeHow Cursor and WarpStream Power AI Productivity: The Future of Coding: How Cursor and WarpStream Power AI Productivity | Life Is But A StreamLearn more at Confluent.ioRegister now for Current NOLA 2025Our Sponsor:  Your data shouldn’t be a problem to manage. It should be your superpower. The Confluent data streaming platform transforms organizations with trustworthy, real-time data that seamlessly spans your entire environment and powers innovation across every use case. Create smarter, deploy faster, and maximize efficiency with a true data streaming platform from the pioneers in data streaming. Learn more at confluent.io. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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• Ep 13 - The Future of Coding: How Cursor and WarpStream Power AI Productivity

  Software development is changing fast. With Cursor, Anysphere is building an AI-forward IDE that fuses human creativity with machine intelligence. At the heart of this transformation is data streaming—making it possible to train models responsibly, deliver lightning-fast Tab completions, and scale telemetry without breaking engineering velocity.In this episode, engineer Alex Haugland shares how WarpStream gives Cursor sovereignty over user data, how telemetry and accounting pipelines strengthen product decisions, and why “coding is really just a bug” in how we interact with computers. You’ll learn:Why data sovereignty and trust are critical for AI-powered productsHow WarpStream abstracts complexity while preserving control over dataWhere telemetry and accounting data streaming improve both user experience and business outcomesHow to right-size your data stack and avoid mismatched scaleFor senior leaders evaluating AI and streaming strategies, Cursor offers a blueprint for balancing innovation, cost, and trust.About the Guest:Alex Haugland is an engineer at Anysphere working on Cursor. He is a massive scale distributed systems performance engineer enthusiastic about understanding complex technical systems, organizational systems, and mentoring junior engineers.Guest Highlight: “Our business is built on top of data, and a lot of it is data that people have been really generous to allow us to use… WarpStream lets us do that in a way where the data sits entirely inside stuff that we control and have access to. Being able to say, ‘All this stuff is locked down on S3; we have control of it,’ is really, really important to us.”Episode Timestamps: *(00:45) -    Anysphere, Cursor, and Data Streaming Strategy*(04:05) - Data Streaming Goodness*(21:30) -  Beyond the Stream*(32:00) - Quick Bytes*(34:45) - Joseph’s Top 3 TakeawaysDive Deeper into Data Streaming:EP1—Stream On: Unleashing Innovation with Data Streaming | Life Is But A StreamEP2—Processing Without Pause: Continuous Stream Processing and Apache Flink® | Life Is But A StreamEP3—The Connective Tissue: Shift Left to turn Data Chaos to Clarity | Life Is But A StreamLinks & Resources:Connect with Joseph: @thedatagiantWarpStream: @WarpStreamLabsCursor: @cursor_aiJoseph’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/thedatagiantAlex’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/alex-haugland-4ba8893bLearn more at Confluent.ioRegister now for Current NOLA 2025: https://current.confluent.io/new-orleans?utm_source=simplecast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=tm.content_life-is-but-a-streamOur Sponsor:  Your data shouldn’t be a problem to manage. It should be your superpower. The Confluent data streaming platform transforms organizations with trustworthy, real-time data that seamlessly spans your entire environment and powers innovation across every use case. Create smarter, deploy faster, and maximize efficiency with a true data streaming platform from the pioneers in data streaming. Learn more at confluent.io. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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• Shaping the Future of AI: A2A + Data Streaming

  All AI problems are data problems—and one of the biggest is getting AI agents to talk to each other. This special episode with Sean Falconer dives into how agents built by different teams often end up stranded in “intelligence silos,” unable to collaborate or share context. The result? Fragmented AI that struggles to deliver real business value. Tune in to learn why moving beyond isolated AI experiments calls for a robust data streaming backbone—and how Confluent's strategic partnership with Google Cloud sets organizations up for building multi-agent AI systems at scale. With technologies like Apache Kafka®, agents can tap into a central stream of trustworthy data—effectively creating a nervous system for your AI ecosystem. That backbone enables real-time exchange, scalable collaboration, and reliable intelligence across the enterprise—unlocking speed and innovation that siloed AI can’t deliver.About the Guest:Sean Falconer is a Senior Director, Product Management - AI Strategy at Confluent where he works on AI strategy and thought leadership. Sean’s been an academic, startup founder, and Googler. He has published works covering a wide range of topics from AI to quantum computing. Sean also hosts the popular engineering podcasts Software Engineering Daily and Software Huddle. Guest Highlight:“What is the message between agents? It's just data. You're moving that data from one agent system to another agent system, whether that's a multi-agent system that's collaborating or even these agents that exist in different, you know, parts of the business, you can use data streaming essentially be the bridge where those agents shared language, the shared communication becomes events.”Episode Timestamps:*(00:00) - Introduction*(00:34) - Why AI is Fundamentally a Data Challenge*(02:17) - Data Streaming: The Foundation for AI*(07:21) - The “Island of Agents” Problem*(09:46) - Streaming Agents vs. Chatbots*(12:35) -  The Consequences of Disconnected Agents*(14:09) -   The Power of Event-Driven Architecture*(25:04) - The A2A Protocol—Google Cloud and Confluent *(31:19) - Model Context Protocol (MCP)*(34:13) - Agent Development Kit (ADK)*(37:36) - Real-World AI Use Cases*(42:20) - Key GenAI Features on Confluent Cloud *(45:43) - Wrap-Up: TakeawaysLinks & Resources:Connect with Joseph: https://www.youtube.com/@TheDataGiantWhy Google’s Agent2Agent Protocol Needs Apache Kafka®Joseph’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thedatagiantSean’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanf/Real-Time AI Agents Powered by Apache Kafka®, Apache Flink®, and Google CloudListen to podcast: https://flowsto.com/r/9BRiRRl1cLearn more at Confluent.ioOur Sponsor  Your data shouldn’t be a problem to manage. It should be your superpower. The Confluent data streaming platform transforms organizations with trustworthy, real-time data that seamlessly spans your entire environment and powers innovation across every use case. Create smarter, deploy faster, and maximize efficiency with a true data streaming platform from the pioneers in data streaming. Learn more at confluent.io.About the ShowHosted by Joseph Morais, Life Is But A Stream is for technology leaders looking to embrace the data revolution and transform their organizations through data streaming. Instant analytics, next level customer experiences, and business innovation that was previously unimaginable: it all starts with Life Is But A Stream. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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