Event Streaming at Deutsche Bahn with Apache Kafka & Confluent Platform

Deutsche Bahn details their journey building the RI-Plattform passenger information system using Apache Kafka and Confluent Platform. They describe migrating from Apache Storm to Kafka Streams, highlighting performance improvements (90% reduction in processing time for schedule imports) achieved through local state stores. The system architecture involves ~100 microservices on Kubernetes/AWS, processing 180 million events daily. They achieved 99.9% availability and are considering ksqlDB and Confluent Cloud. A challenge with Kafka Streams rebalancing causing brief downtime is noted, with interest in the Static Membership protocol.