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Amazon MSK vs Apache Spark Streaming comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon MSK
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
6th
Average Rating
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Apache Spark Streaming
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Amazon MSK is 9.2%, down from 9.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Apache Spark Streaming is 3.7%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

FNU AKSHANSH - PeerSpot reviewer
May 9, 2024
Streamlines our processes, and we don't need to configure any VPCs; it's automatic
Amazon MSK has good integration because our team has been undergoing significant changes. Coupling it with MSK within AWS is helpful. We don't have to set up additionals or monitor external environments. This coupling streamlines our processes, and we don't need to configure any VPCs; it's…
Oscar Estorach - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 25, 2024
Versatile and flexible when dealing with large-scale data streams
What I like about Spark is its versatility in supporting multiple languages and that makes it my preferred choice for building scalable and efficient systems, whether it is hooking databases with web applications or handling large-scale data transformations. Apache Spark Streaming is versatile. You can use it for competitive intelligence, gathering data from competitors, or for internal tasks like monitoring workflows. It works well in the cloud, and you can structure data using Databricks or Spark, providing flexibility for different projects. Spark Streaming's flexibility shines when dealing with large-scale data streams. It caters to different needs, offering real-time insights for tasks like online sales analytics. The ability to prioritize data streams is valuable, especially for monitoring competitor prices online.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Amazon MSK's scalability is very good."
"It offers good stability."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon MSK is the integration."
"Amazon MSK has good integration because our team has been undergoing significant changes. Coupling it with MSK within AWS is helpful. We don't have to set up additionals or monitor external environments. This"
"MSK has a private network that's an out-of-box feature."
"Overall, it is very cost-effective based on the workflow."
"The solution's technical support was helpful."
"Amazon MSK's separation of concerns and ease of creating and deploying new features are highly valuable. It just requires to assign them to the topic, and then anyone who needs to consume these messages can do so directly from Amazon MSK. This separation of concerns makes it very convenient, especially for new feature development, as developers can easily access the messages they need without having to deal with complex server communications or protocol setups."
"Apache Spark Streaming is versatile. You can use it for competitive intelligence, gathering data from competitors, or for internal tasks like monitoring workflows."
"The platform’s most valuable feature for processing real-time data is its ability to handle continuous data streams."
"The solution is very stable and reliable."
"Apache Spark's capabilities for machine learning are quite extensive and can be used in a low-code way."
"Apache Spark Streaming's most valuable feature is near real-time analytics. The developers can build APIs easily for a code-steaming pipeline. The solutions have an ecosystem of integration with other stock services."
"Apache Spark Streaming has features like checkpointing and Streaming API that are useful."
"It's the fastest solution on the market with low latency data on data transformations."
"The solution is better than average and some of the valuable features include efficiency and stability."
 

Cons

"It does not autoscale. Because if you do keep it manually when you add a note to the cluster and then you register it, then it is scalable, but the fact that you have to go and do it, I think, makes it, again, a bit of some operational overhead when managing the cluster."
"It would be really helpful if Amazon MSK could provide a single installation that covers all the servers."
"The configuration seems a little complex and the documentation on the product is not available."
"In my opinion, there are areas in Amazon MSK that could be improved, particularly in terms of configuration. Initially setting it up and getting it connected was quite challenging. The naming conventions for policies were updated by AWS, and some were undocumented, leading to confusion with outdated materials. It took us weeks of trial and error before discovering new methods through hidden tutorials and official documentation."
"Amazon MSK could improve on the features they offer. They are still lagging behind Confluence."
"One of the reasons why we prefer Kafka is because the support is a little bit difficult to manage with Amazon MSK."
"Horizontal scale-out is actually not easy, making it an area where improvements are required."
"It should be more flexible, integration-wise."
"The service structure of Apache Spark Streaming can improve. There are a lot of issues with memory management and latency. There is no real-time analytics. We recommend it for the use cases where there is a five-second latency, but not for a millisecond, an IOT-based, or the detection anomaly-based. Flink as a service is much better."
"The cost and load-related optimizations are areas where the tool lacks and needs improvement."
"The initial setup is quite complex."
"We would like to have the ability to do arbitrary stateful functions in Python."
"The debugging aspect could use some improvement."
"Integrating event-level streaming capabilities could be beneficial."
"The solution itself could be easier to use."
"It was resource-intensive, even for small-scale applications."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When you create a complete enterprise-driven architecture that is deployable on an enterprise scale, I would say that the prices of Amazon MSK and Confluent Platform become comparable."
"The platform has better pricing than one of its competitors."
"The price of Amazon MSK is less than some competitor solutions, such as Confluence."
"I was using the open-source community version, which was self-hosted."
"Spark is an affordable solution, especially considering its open-source nature."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is expensive, or not cost-effective, and ten is cheap, I rate the price a seven."
"People pay for Apache Spark Streaming as a service."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
20%
University
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon MSK?
Amazon MSK has significantly improved our organization by building seamless integration between systems.
What needs improvement with Amazon MSK?
From AWS, I would consider more MSK schema validation is needed. It is easy to integrate if you have an application, but on-topic integration is more complex. You can do it with EvenBridge very eas...
What is your primary use case for Amazon MSK?
I have used Confluent Cloud and Amazon MSK in my company. We are not using it for analytics and it is more for CDC processes, so we change the capture processes. It is used to extract data from a d...
What do you like most about Apache Spark Streaming?
Apache Spark Streaming is versatile. You can use it for competitive intelligence, gathering data from competitors, or for internal tasks like monitoring workflows.
What needs improvement with Apache Spark Streaming?
The product's event handling capabilities, particularly compared to Kaspersky, need improvement. Integrating event-level streaming capabilities could be beneficial. This aligns with the idea of exp...
What is your primary use case for Apache Spark Streaming?
I've used it more for ETL. It's useful for creating data pipelines, streaming datasets, generating synthetic data, synchronizing data, creating data lakes, and loading and unloading data is fast an...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka
Spark Streaming
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
UC Berkeley AMPLab, Amazon, Alibaba Taobao, Kenshoo, eBay Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon MSK vs. Apache Spark Streaming and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.