Congrats to Richie and Ryan for building so much momentum in a short period of time!

Great to see. Warpstream's architecture was quite promising and the acquisition helps to validate it.

One curious question: why couldn't Confluent build their own Warpstream, or pioneer one themselves, these last few years? The space seems quite close to their technology and the needs of their customers. "Lack of talent" or "disorganization" would be a dispiriting answer.

The Warpstream engineers are very strong in the space. Buying the company gets you the tech, the customers, the name, and the talent that built it. Building it gets you only the first, and significantly behind the first mover.

I thought they had built a version of it called Cloud Freight Clusters [0]. Edit: Freight clusters get a single mention in the third paragraph of the Confluent announcement blog [1].

0. https://www.confluent.io/blog/introducing-confluent-cloud-fr...

1. https://www.confluent.io/blog/confluent-acquires-warpstream/

What other data systems are out there using disaggregated storage, especially for streaming? And especially open source?

Will be an exciting Current 2024 conference, Sept 18/19. Free streaming tickets available.

Please checkout automq: https://github.com/AutoMQ/automq

AutoMQ is a cloud-first alternative to Kafka by decoupling durability to S3 and EBS. 10x cost-effective. Autoscale in seconds. Single-digit ms latency.

Great quick exit for the Warpstream team.

Funny to see people still trying the "our product will be even better" line at acquisition.

Net win for both companies, probably a loss for customers though. Warpstream was aggressively commoditizing Kafka

Been waiting[0] for this ever since the post[1] from last year. No-brainer for all involved. Congrats!

[0]: popcorn.gif [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37036291