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Amazon MSK vs Cloudera DataFlow comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Amazon MSK
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
6th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cloudera DataFlow
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
14th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Amazon MSK is 7.9%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudera DataFlow is 1.0%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

FNU AKSHANSH - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlines our processes, and we don't need to configure any VPCs; it's automatic
We don't have many use cases involving ingesting large amounts of data and scaling up and down. We have a clear understanding of our data volume, which remains relatively constant throughout the week. While we're aware of other features Amazon MSK offers, we feel confident in our current setup. If our requirements change significantly in the future, we'll reassess our needs and consider adopting Amazon MSK.
Mohamed-Saied - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient data integration and workflow scheduling elevate project performance
Cloudera DataFlow is used as an ETL or ELT solution within Cloudera's data pipeline. Our organization heavily relies on it for data ingestion, transformation, and warehousing. It is also used daily for operational tasks, and it integrates well within Cloudera's ecosystem for high performance and…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"MSK has a private network that's an out-of-box feature."
"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."
"It is a stable product."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon MSK is the integration."
"It provides installations, scaling, and other functionalities straight out of the box."
"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"
"Overall, it is very cost-effective based on the workflow."
"The solution's technical support was helpful."
"The initial setup was not so difficult"
"The most effective features are data management and analytics."
"Cloudera DataFlow is fully compatible with Cloudera's ecosystem and offers high efficiency through native connectors for various ecosystems."
"DataFlow's performance is okay."
"This solution is very scalable and robust."
 

Cons

"Horizontal scale-out is actually not easy, making it an area where improvements are required."
"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."
"The product's schema support needs enhancement. It will help enhance integration with many kinds of languages of programming languages, especially for environments using languages like .NET."
"The cost of using Amazon MSK is high, which is a significant disadvantage, as the increase in cloud costs by 50% to 60% does not justify the savings."
"The cost of using Amazon MSK is high, which is a significant disadvantage, as the increase in cloud costs by 50% to 60% does not justify the savings."
"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."
"One of the reasons why we prefer Kafka is because the support is a little bit difficult to manage with Amazon MSK."
"Amazon MSK could improve on the features they offer. They are still lagging behind Confluence."
"It's an outdated legacy product that doesn't meet the needs of modern data analysts and scientists."
"Cloudera DataFlow's UI interface could be enhanced significantly. Memory handling can also be improved to be better than it is today."
"It is not easy to use the R language. Though I don't know if it's possible, I believe it is possible, but it is not the best language for machine learning."
"Although their workflow is pretty neat, it still requires a lot of transformation coding; especially when it comes to Python and other demanding programming languages."
 

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 price of Amazon MSK is less than some competitor solutions, such as Confluence."
"The platform has better pricing than one of its competitors."
"DataFlow isn't expensive, but its value for money isn't great."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Retailer
5%
Computer Software Company
17%
University
17%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Media Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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?
The cost of using Amazon MSK is high, which is a significant disadvantage, as the increase in cloud costs by 50% to 60% does not justify the savings. There were no other notable issues.
What is your primary use case for Amazon MSK?
We used Amazon MSK to manage high-volume third-party data entering our system. It served as a buffer when our system was unable to consume data at high speeds in real-time. The data initially went ...
What do you like most about Cloudera DataFlow?
The most effective features are data management and analytics.
What is your primary use case for Cloudera DataFlow?
We use Cloudera DataFlow for stream analytics.
 

Also Known As

Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka
CDF, Hortonworks DataFlow, HDF
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Clearsense
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon MSK vs. Cloudera DataFlow and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.