Apache Samza vs Ververica Platform

Apache Samza is a free, open-source distributed framework for applications that process data from multiple sources in real time. It supports stateless and stateful workloads, using a scalable, fault-tolerant state store for retained application state. Developers can use the high-level Streams API, lower-level Task API, Samza SQL or an Apache Beam API; Beam support for Python and Go is described as work in progress. Java and Scala applications can embed Samza as a lightweight client library. Built-in integrations include Apache Kafka, AWS Kinesis, Azure Event Hubs, Elasticsearch and Apache Hadoop, with custom sources also supported. Samza runs on YARN, Kubernetes or as a standalone library across public-cloud, containerized and bare-metal environments. Host affinity and incremental checkpointing help recover tasks and their state after failures. Processing is at least once. The project supports SQL processing and event-time windows, and its documentation describes applications with several terabytes of state and thousands of cores. Samza is self-hosted on Linux and distributed as source artifacts and through Maven; there is no binary release at this time.

Ververica Platform combines stream and batch processing in one runtime for enterprise production workloads. Built by the original creators of Apache Flink, it is described as fully compatible with Flink APIs, SQL, and connectors, allowing existing Flink jobs to run without code changes. Materialized tables maintain themselves; listed operational features include auto-scaling, auto-recovery, and upgrades without downtime. Deployment choices include managed cloud, BYOC in AWS, Azure, or GCP, and self-managed Kubernetes, on-premises, or air-gapped infrastructure. Its integrations catalog describes more than 100 pre-built connectors for databases, message queues, data lakes, cloud services, and REST APIs. Connector features include exactly-once delivery and event-time watermark strategies. The platform lists SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certification and multi-tenant role-based access control. Managed cloud lists AES-256 encryption at rest, TLS 1.3 in transit, GDPR compliance, and HIPAA eligibility. Community Edition is free; a free license may be required and its terms may restrict use. Pricing is on request for other options; managed-service use is subject to documented limits.