Get Kafka-Nated Episode 7

Aiven

Dec 8, 2025

Join Hugh Evans on Get KafkaNated as he sits down with Tristan Stevens, VP of Global Customer Success at Redpanda Data and former Cloudera streaming expert. Tristan shares his unique perspective on the evolution of streaming infrastructure, drawing from years of experience leading customer success in both Hadoop ecosystems and next-generation streaming platforms.

In this episode, we explore:
🔷 What “Kafka without the complexity” really means in practice
🔷 Common pain points enterprises face running Kafka in production
🔷 Why organisations are switching from established Kafka deployments to Redpanda
🔷 Lessons learned from managing $285M ARR platform migrations at Cloudera and how they apply to streaming today
🔷 The evolving streaming landscape: Kafka, Redpanda, Pulsar, Kinesis, and emerging opportunities for innovation
🔷 A practical framework for engineering leaders evaluating streaming platforms

Whether you’re building a modern data architecture, managing real-time analytics, or just curious about the future of streaming, this episode is packed with insights and actionable takeaways.

Timestamps

00:02 – Intro & Welcome

00:53 – Customer Success at Red Panda

02:17 – Transition from Hadoop to Streaming

04:52 – Complexity of Kafka & Red Panda’s Approach

10:07 – Drivers for Switching to Red Panda

15:53 – Data Sovereignty & Global Considerations

17:19 – Tiered Storage & Lakehouse Integration

24:02 – Migration Lessons from Cloudera

27:44 – Streaming Ecosystem & Market Evolution

32:08 – Closing Remarks & Next Episode

Learn more about Aiven for Apache Kafka: https://aiven.io/kafka
Learn more about Aiven Inkless: https://aiven.io/inkless
Read the blog The Future of Data Sovereignty: https://aiven.io/blog/the-future-of-data-sovereignty-in-europe
Watch the previous episode of Get Kafka-Nated: https://youtu.be/BgaJspGMy6Q