Confluent, the company behind Kafka, today released a preview of Kafka Streams, the simple stream processing framework “built in” to Kafka that some of us have discussed recently. This is exciting news, but even better is that to mark the release, Jay Kreps — CEO of Confluent, co-creator of Kafka and Samza, and author of the amazing monograph The Log… — has dropped another wisdom bomb on us: Introducing Kafka Streams: Stream Processing Made Simple. It’s a deep exploration of the why behind Kafka streams and why it’s about more than just being a lighter-weight alternative to Samza, Storm, or Spark Streaming. The vision that Kreps shares is exciting and cogent.