Episode 156:

Simple, Performant, Cost-effective Data Streaming with Alex Gallego of Redpanda Data

September 20, 2023

This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric and Kostas chat with Alex Gallego, the Founder & CEO of Redpanda Data. During the episode, the group discusses the importance of Kafka in data infrastructure and the lack of competition in the market. Alex shares his background in streaming systems and the development of Redpanda. The conversation also includes the challenges of operationalizing streaming systems and the evolution of storage systems, using WebAssembly as the interface for writing functions, the key differences between Redpanda and other streaming platforms, where the name Redpanda came from, and more.

Notes:

Highlights from this week’s conversation include:

  • Alex’s background in the data space and the creation of Redpanda (4:23)
  • The cost and complexity of streaming (11:07)
  • The evolution of storage with Kafka (12:04)
  • The distinction between streaming technologies (15:10)
  • Simplicity as a Core Design Principle (27:03)
  • Cost Efficiency in a Cloud Native Era (30:44)
  • Removing complexity with Redpanda (34:21)
  • Migrations and compatibility with Redpanda (40:35)
  • The Future of Redpanda (43:44)
  • The Story Behind Redpanda (46:45)
  • Final thoughts and takeaways (50:25)

 

The Data Stack Show is a weekly podcast powered by RudderStack, the CDP for developers. Each week we’ll talk to data engineers, analysts, and data scientists about their experience around building and maintaining data infrastructure, delivering data and data products, and driving better outcomes across their businesses with data.

RudderStack helps businesses make the most out of their customer data while ensuring data privacy and security. To learn more about RudderStack visit rudderstack.com.