A quick summary of new features, updates, and improvements in Confluent Platform 5.4, including Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), Structured Audit Logs, Multi-Region Clusters, Confluent Control Center enhancements, Schema Validation, and the preview for Tiered Storage.This release also includes pull queries and embedded connectors in preview as part of KSQL.

A quick summary of the most important features in Confluent Platform 5.3. We discuss improved Kubernetes and Ansible support, improvements to Confluent Control Center that give you better insight into the data in your cluster, and an important new set of security features—Role-Based Access Control—aimed at making complex deployments more secure.

Mitch Henderson explains how to plan and deploy your first application running on Confluent Platform. He covers critical factors to consider, how to make decisions about deployment solutions, how to go about setting up monitoring and testing, the marks of success, and what to do after your first project launches successfully.