You no longer need your own Kafka server to try out kaazing.io as we now offer one for you. Simply use your Kafka client library of choice to publish data to our Sandbox (located at kafka-sandbox.kaazing.io:9092). For each “topic” that you create within the Sandbox, kaazing.io will automatically generate a Server-sent Event (SSE) endpoint that will receive a stream of its underlying topic’s data. Drop this endpoint into a desktop or mobile application and you’re ready to delivery real-time features and functionalities!

Note: The Sandbox is for prototyping purposes only. It’s publicly accessible and carries no security or delivery guarantees. If you’re interested in going into production with kaazing.io, we’d love to talk.

Kafka – Almost Limitless

Today, the words “Apache Kafka” and “streaming” have become synonymous. As a distributed messaging system, Kafka is playing a critical role in establishing real-time data pipelines between backend systems, and microservices. Its horizontal scalability, fault-tolerance, low latency and high-throughput are key attributes that place it at the center of an event-driven backend. Yet, despite Kafka’s power inside the datacenter, it has not been optimized for consumers located across a public API boundary. In other words, Kafka does not directly enable “streaming” in a web context.

Server Sent Events – They Just Work

SSE is a protocol that allows web clients to receive a stream of updates from a server over HTTP. It’s an HTML5 standard that is supported by most browsers and mobile frameworks, and can be backported with polyfill for those that don’t. Unlike WebSockets, Server Sent Events are a one way communications channel – events flow from server to client only; however, what SSE lacks in terms of bidirectional communication patterns, it makes up for in simplicity, resilience and performance. Out of the box, SSE comes with features such as auto-reconnect, unique message/event ids, arbitrary message support and multiplexing.

Kafka Web Streams

In scenarios where data travels unidirectionally to the client, such as betting odds, news feeds, or other automated data push mechanisms (e.g. updating a client-side Web SQL Database or IndexedDB object store), SSE is extremely effective. Continuing an existing stream of data, such as one coming out of Kafka is also a use case that is well aligned with SSEs capabilities. In fact, there is even a logical mapping between Kafka and SSE messages. Nonetheless, the actual bridging of these two protocols in a seamless and low-latent manner is far from trivial. At its core, kaazing.io is a hyper performant protocol transformation engine that is exactly designed for such as task.

The Bottom Line

kaazing.io enables the development of robust real-time web applications based on open source and web standards. It exposes the performance and resilience benefits of backend systems such as Kafka to the frontend application layer and does not require any proprietary protocols or vendor libraries for data delivery. All in all, kaazing.io not only supports exciting functional developments but leads to a more decoupled and transparent architecture.

The post Introducing the kaazing.io Kafka Sandbox appeared first on Kaazing.

kaazing.io is an iPaaS that allows you to build highly resilient and scalable real-time mobile and web apps powered by Apache Kafka. It works by seamlessly extending Kafka data streams over the web using Server Sent Events (SSE).

Setting up kaazing.io is very easy. You configure it to connect to your Kafka broker, and nominate which topics you’d like to stream. Clients then connect to kaazing.io and receive streaming data.

The Google Cloud Platform (GCP) facilitates getting started with Kafka by offering a hosted version of the distributed stream processing platform. In this article we’ll walk through the steps to quickly deploy Kafka on GCP and then connect kaazing.io to it. After you complete the setup below, you’ll have live SSE endpoints which you can drop into your client code and power everything from dashboards, to chat apps, to real-time geo-tracking features.

Following is everything that is required to use kaazing.io:

1. Have a Kafka broker running and accessible from the internet
2. Use the kaazing.io console to configure the topics you want to use
3. Connect to kaazing.io from your application and start streaming data!

Now let’s get started!

Deploying The Kafka Broker

Step 1. Register for a Google Cloud Platform Free Trial

Step 2. Navigate to the Google Cloud Platform Dashboard

Step 3. Launch Kafka using One-click Kafka Deployment

Step 4. Create a Project

Name your project and click “Create”

Step 5. If prompted, create a new billing account and enable it

Step 6. Deploy Resources

After creating your billing account you will be returned to the Launch screen. Click on “Launch On Compute Engine” to proceed to the deployment configuration page.

Ensure that under the Firewall section both “Allow TCP port 2181 and 9092” are checked. Click on “More” and set the “Source IP” ranges for both ports to “0.0.0.0/0” then click on “Deploy”.

Deployment will take a few minutes and when completed the “Suggested next steps” block will be displayed on the right side of the page.

Step 7. Configure the Kafka Broker

Before we can link the Kafka broker to kaazing.io we need to configure it to listen on its public network interface. To do so select “Open in browser window” from the SSH pulldown menu (1 & 2).

Once the terminal window becomes available, copy and paste the command below (including double quotes) to update the kafka configuration file (/opt/kafkaf/config/server.properties) such that the broker listens for connections on its public interface:

sudo bash -c “$(wget -O – https://s3.amazonaws.com/kaazingio-scripts/update-kafka-config.sh)”

(Show me update-kafka-config.sh)

Congratulations! You now have a Kafka broker that is publicly available and listening for connections on port 9092. Please make a note of the public IP address of your Kafka instance as it will be required in later steps. In our example the public IP address is 35.238.129.11.

Step 8. Publish Messages to Topics on the Kafka Broker

Run the following command in the instance terminal window to publish messages to the topic demo.events:

bash -c “$(wget -O – https://s3.amazonaws.com/kaazingio-scripts/publish-to-kafka.sh)”

(Show me update-to-kafka.sh)

While messages are being published go ahead and head over to kaazing.io to configure a new streaming endpoint.

Configuring kaazing.io

Next we will register for and configure kaazing.io to work with our newly minted Kafka broker.

Step 1. Subscribe to kaazing.io and Create an App

To subscribe for the kaazing.io streaming service head over to https://console.kaazing.io and follow the instructions provided.

Once you have subscribed and logged into your kaazing.io account, click the “ADD A NEW APP” button to reach the “Add a new app” screen.

Select the “Direct” option (1), enter a name for your broker (2)  as well as the instance public IP address that you noted down earlier in the “Kafka cluster domain name” field (3). You can also retrieve the instance public IP address via the GCP Dashboard and selecting “Resources” for the project created in Step 4 above.

Step 2. Create a Server-Sent Events Endpoint

Once the Status field shows that your application is “Live”, proceed to creating an endpoint:

• Click + to add a new Endpoint
• Select demo.events from the Kafka Topic pulldown menu
• Click on ︎  and wait for endpoint creation to complete

• Click the “Show live data” button to subscribe to the topic and view streaming data

Note: If you do not see messages streaming then repeat Step 8 above to publish new messages.

Conclusion

Apache Kafka is a powerful technology when it comes to establishing streaming capabilities between server-side services; however, it also can act as an extremely effective backend for real-time frontend applications and features. As we had demonstrated in this article, kaazing.io quickly unlocks this capability of Kafka (especially if it is hosted on the Google Cloud Platform) by extending its data streams over the web using Server Sent Events.

If you have questions, shoot us a tweet @kaazing

Troubleshooting

Testing connections to the Kafka broker

To test your connection you could install and use a tool such as Kafka Tool. Installation, configuration and usage steps are provided on the Kafka Tool homepage.

Step 1. Create a Single Broker Kafka Cluster

1. Download and install Kafka Tool
2. Click on the “Add Cluster” button (1)
3. Fill in Cluster Name (2)
4. Fill in Zookeeper Host (3)
5. Click “Test” and check for a successful connection then click “Yes” within the test popup window to finish adding the connection

Step 2. Test Connectivity to the Kafka Broker

1. Click on the name of the Kafka broker (1)
2. Click on the “Brokers” folder to display the broker IP and port
3. Click on the “Ping” button (2)

Similarly you can click on “Topics” to view a list of existing topics. For additional information on how to use Kafka Tool visit their features webpage.

The post Kafka Web Streaming With The Google Cloud Platform and kaazing.io appeared first on Kaazing.

DisasterAWARE Enterprise

Citrix is using DisasterAWARE Enterprise to prepare and protect its business and human assets worldwide. This is the same powerful technology used exclusively by top U.S. federal agencies and disaster management organizations around the globe for over a decade powered by Pacific Disaster Center’s global, cloud-based DisasterAWARE platform.

“It is critical to an organization like Citrix to stay ahead when it comes to natural disasters. Some key elements we are looking for in a leading risk management solution include: receiving advanced notifications, assessments of magnitude, and quantifiable impact of natural hazards on a global scale. Historical data combined with risk assessment estimates—before, during and after—in one platform helps my team stay prepared and help protect our employees.”

Jeffrey Dean, CPP, Director, Global Security Risk Services at Citrix

Jeff on risk assessment: “DisasterAWARE Enterprise allows my team to compile quick global status updates and assessments for our management team. In the past, we had to manually gather information from different data sources, which required a lot more labor and hours.

Additionally, my team uses DisasterAWARE Enterprise for site planning prior to making decisions about where to open new offices that may potentially intersect with risky flood zones or be vulnerable to hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and other kinds of hazards.

It’s all about minimizing risk and maximizing our business resilience.”  



Jeff on protecting employees and securing assets: “In fact, during this year’s annual hurricane preparedness, which ran for several days and involved all of Citrix’s cross-functional Emergency Response Team stakeholders, we leveraged DisasterAware Enterprise as an integral analysis tool clearly depicting all aspects of the hurricane threat—from Watch to Warning—and how to most efficiently move our employees out of harm’s way and secure Citrix structural assets. This translates to reducing costs associated with risks and underscores Citrix’s goal for operational excellence.”

“There is an imperative to get ahead of the curve, not pay the price of being behind it. In Puerto Rico with Hurricane Maria and in California during the wildfires, the world has seen what happens when you get behind. We are truly excited to empower Jeff and the team at Citrix with access to global hazard early warning, monitoring and highly accurate predictive impact modeling for risk management and business continuity planning worldwide.”
Bob Miller, CEO, Kaazing

The Software as a Service (SaaS) – DisasterAWARE Enterprise key features include:

• 
RELIABLE CRITICAL HAZARD DATA & INFORMATION
  • Timely multi-hazard incident, historical and observational data in one
• MODELING GIVES INSIGHT
  • Turn data into actionable insight in near real-time
• CUSTOMIZED EARLY WARNING AND GEOFENCING
  • Easily import business asset and other data to receive warnings and alerts
• 
NEAR REAL-TIME SITUATIONAL AWARENESS
  • From official updates, thousands of live traffic cameras and Twitter
• TRUSTED BY RISK PROFESSIONALS
  • In operational use for 15 years, in 65 countries, in 6 languages
• DESIGNED FOR MOBILE FIRST
  • Accessible anytime, anywhere, online or offline, including desktop
• DisasterAWARE ENTERPRISE
  • A Risk Intelligence platform on its own or complementing current EOC/BCP/ ERM/GRC solutions

About Kaazing:

Kaazing is the leading provider of event-driven, over-the-web connectivity for enterprise. Its key differentiators are scalability, security, and speed of delivery with the most cost-effective solution.

Kaazing’s customers include one of the world’s largest energy-producing and trading companies, three of the world’s top ten banks, one of America’s top three professional sports franchises, one of Europe’s most sophisticated rail transportation networks and two of the top three transportation companies in the World.

Kaazing: https://kaazing.com DisasterAWARE Enterprise: http://disasteraware.com

Press Contact:
Kaazing – Virve Virtanen, +1 914 536 3712
virve.virtanen@kaazing.com

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The post Kaazing prepares and protects worldwide assets and employees of major cloud company with DisasterAWARE Enterprise™ appeared first on Kaazing.

New records are being set each year for natural disaster losses, we face an ever-increasing need to be prepared. According to the Economist since 1970, the number of disasters worldwide has more than quadrupled to around 400 a year. Last year’s total was the highest ever seen.

For the past 18 months, Kaazing has been engaged in joint development with the Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) in order to extend the reach of critical, life-saving technologies to provide businesses and local governments with an enterprise-grade risk intelligence and management solution.

Today we were joined by PDC, Sonim, Aragon Research, media, analysts and by more than 50 local dignitaries and influencers at the San Jose Tech Museum for the exclusive unveiling of the DisasterAWARE Enterprise, the most data-rich risk intelligence platform in the world. This is an excellent example of technology developed for the government being applied to the commercial market.

Key differentiators of DisasterAWARE Enterprise include:

• Access to historical data
• Predictive modeling
• Hundreds of data feeds from current weather observations and forecasts to economic data, to demographics, 
to social listening (via Twitter API)
• Access to over 20K live traffic camera feeds around the world
• All in one cloud-based SaaS platform

DisasterAWARE Enterprise allows Emergency Operations Centers to collaborate with First Responders and others to provide situational updates in real time. As a result of incorporating Montage Studio, it is very intuitive with outstanding graphics.

Today is just the beginning, looking at these numbers and seeing the impact of natural disasters on people and the disruption of business operations, there is an imperative to get ahead of the curve, not pay the price of being behind it.

The world has seen what happened in Puerto Rico with Hurricane Maria when you get behind. One of the key aspects of this platform is when it is used effectively it reduces human hardship and suffering for people around the world.

With DisasterAWARE Enterprise you dramatically improve your emergency response as well as the deployment of resources.

DisasterAWARE Enterprise is available now. Businesses can request a free trial at www.disasteraware.com

Bob Miller, CEO
Kaazing

The post Exclusive Unveiling of DisasterAWARE Enterprise™ at the San Jose Tech Museum by Bob Miller, CEO Kaazing appeared first on Kaazing.

KAAZING UNVEILS DisasterAWARE ENTERPRISE REAL TIME RISK MANAGEMENT PLATFORM FOR BUSINESSES WORLDWIDE

San Jose, CA, March 22, 2018 — Today, Kaazing, a leading provider of web streaming technology, is proud to announce DisasterAWARE Enterprise.

Powered by the Pacific Disaster Center (PDC)’s cloud-based risk management platform for monitoring global hazards, DisasterAWARE Enterprise integrates near-real-time observation data and models outputs from a variety of scientific sources with hundreds of baseline and historical data. The platform supports enterprise risk management decisions and continuity planning.

Enterprise-Grade Life-Saving Technology

With new records being set each year for natural disaster losses, enterprises face an ever-increasing need to be prepared. For decades, DisasterAWARE has served the needs of top agencies worldwide, including:

• U.S. Department of Defense
• Homeland Security FEMA
• The United Nations
• The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
• A variety of international humanitarian aid organizations

With over 1.7 million users of DisasterAWARE mobile app, Disaster Alert for the public, spanning 115 international organizations, Kaazing is helping to broaden the reach of this critical, life-saving technology to provide businesses with an enterprise-grade solution.

Over 200 Data Sources Is Just The Beginning

Kaazing’s DisasterAWARE Enterprise, a cloud-based SaaS risk management platform, offers:

• The largest collection of scientifically verified global data for observations and incidents
• Predictive modeling
• Hazard exposure and impact assessment

In addition to over 200 different data sources, the platform offers integrated alerting, collaboration tools, and monitoring of social media channels like Twitter to view hotspots of activity.

Risk Management on All Devices

DisasterAWARE Enterprise is optimized for use on multiple devices including PCs, tablets, and smartphones.DisasterAWARE Enterprise is powered by Kaazing’s latest generation of serverless connectivity technology, enabling a seamless user experience. Differentiating features include:

• Offline operation
• Access to traffic cameras
• The ability to import custom data such as the location of staff, offices, and supply chain routes

Industry Agnostic Risk Management

Even more noteworthy, DisasterAWARE Enterprise is industry agnostic. It can be vertically integrated into the supply chain and logistics and is well suited to protect a multitude of industries including travel, insurance, education, healthcare, utilities, finance, airports, mining, ports, retail, and other global enterprises.

Bob Miller, Kaazing CEO:

“We are bringing an unparalleled depth of information and situational context, making it easy for enterprises to visualize threats, both in real-time and ahead of disasters, to protect business personnel, assets, and operational continuity”.

Ray Shirkhodai, Executive Director, PDC (Pacific Disaster Center):

“We are excited to bring the power of our DisasterAWARE risk intelligence platform to the Enterprise through partnership with Kaazing and to empower large and small businesses to take proactive steps in protecting their people, assets, and investments. For well over a decade, under the University of Hawaii, PDC has been supporting top agencies and risk reduction initiatives around the globe with the most reliable information, science, and life-saving technology for disaster risk reduction.”
pdc.org

Ken Rehbehn, InsightsFounder and Principal Analyst, Critical Communications:

“Effective crisis management is an essential foundation for sustained brand reputation. New cloud-based disaster preparation and management solutions are vital tools that help enterprises address potential disasters with speed to minimize disruption and boost customer satisfaction. By leveraging a broad array of timely data sources with powerful dashboards, business leaders gain the big picture as well as detailed views helping guide strategy and tactics should the worst come to pass.”
critcomminsights.com

Stephanie Atkinson, CEO, Founder & Principal Analyst, Compass Intelligence

“Cloud-based DisasterAWARE Enterprise, Risk Intelligence solution brings into one platform an impressive set of the global historical data, scientific modeling and solution tailoring capabilities that should help any business from a to z, choosing a business site to preparing for natural disasters and recovery after being impacted. Embedded Kaazing.io technology is a key-enabling asset, which helps scaling the platform for enterprises in a very compelling price point.”
compassintelligence.com

About Kaazing

Kaazing is the leading provider of event-driven, over-the-web connectivity. With Kaazing’s enterprise-grade solutions, including an integrated application development environment, customers can securely and cost-effectively respond to digital consumers’ demand for personalized services and support via real-time web and mobile apps. Furthermore, with Kaazing, customers can dramatically reduce the IT costs and time associated with merging and securing systems and can move their services from on-premise to cloud to containers without requiring changes to their applications. Kaazing customers include one of the world’s largest energy-producing and trading companies, three of the world’s top ten banks, one of America’s top three professional sports franchises, one of Europe’s most sophisticated rail transportation networks and two of the top three transportation companies in the World.
Kaazing: kaazing.com DisasterAWARE Enterprise: disasteraware.com

Press Contact: Virve Virtanen, +1 914 536 3712, virve.virtanen@kaazing.com

Watch DisasterAWARE Enterprise: Here
Images of DisasterAWARE Enterprise: Here
Product Information: Here

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Kaazing and Pacific Disaster Center partner to make leading DisasterAWARE technology available to businesses worldwide

San Jose, CA, March, 8, 2018 —Today, Kaazing and Pacific Disaster Center announce a strategic partnership to provide businesses with the same powerful technology used exclusively by top U.S. federal agencies and disaster management organizations around the globe for over a decade. Powered by Pacific Disaster Center’s global, cloud-based DisasterAWARE platform, DisasterAWARE Enterprise will soon be released as the most advanced enterprise risk intelligence platform in the industry.

“We are excited to partner with Kaazing and to bring private industry the same life-saving science and technology that has grown out of decades of collaboration with agencies who share our mission to protect millions around the world,” said Pacific Disaster Center Executive Director Ray Shirkhodai. “We anticipate DisasterAWARE Enterprise will allow businesses to take more proactive steps in protecting their people, assets, and investments.”

Kaazing, a leader in enterprise application-to-application solutions agrees. According to Kaazing CEO Bob Miller, the unprecedented losses from natural disasters in 2017 provide but one example of the need for enterprises to have reliable science and technology to make informed decisions and minimize risk. To help the Center scale DisasterAWARE for enterprise use, Kaazing is embedding its technologies into the platform.

“Like no other time in history, densely populated areas are exposed to an increasing frequency and severity of hazards,” said Miller. He continued, “Kaazing is proud to release DisasterAWARE Enterprise in partnership with PDC and to help businesses access global hazard monitoring and highly accurate predictive impact modeling for risk management and business continuity planning worldwide.”

Kaazing and Pacific Disaster Center—an applied research center managed by the University of Hawaii—will officially announce the DisasterAWARE Enterprise on March 22, 2018. The Software as a Service (SaaS) will be available through Kaazing online, allowing subscribers easy access to the product.

DisasterAWARE Enterprise key features include:

• Real-time, global hazard monitoring with dashboards, customizable alerts, social listening tools, draw and bookmark sharing, and live traffic camera feeds.
• Predictive hazard modeling for estimating impacts and damages for a variety of hazards.
• Visual geospatial intelligence, mapping data from 200 sources that provide current forecasts and observations, historical hazard data, infrastructure, demographic, global risk and vulnerability, conflict, and a host of other risk-related data.
• Client data-friendly enabling customer information, such as the location of staff, offices, supply chain routes, to be easily imported into the system.
• Integrated interagency situational reports aggregated from international agencies as well as sources like the National Weather Service, NASA, NOAA, CDC, and others.
• Scalable, flexible, and easy to implement across any industry from supply chain logistics, travel, insurance, education, airports, healthcare, mining, finance, retail, and global enterprises.
• Offline support for global maps, hazard data editing, passive and implicit spatial data cache access.
• Multi device support: PC, tablet and mobile phone (Android, iOS).
• Localization supporting six different languages including English, Spanish, Indonesian, Korean, Thai, and Vietnamese.

About Kaazing:

Kaazing is the leading provider of event-driven, over-the-web connectivity for enterprise. Its key differentiators are scalability, security and speed of delivery with the most cost effective solution. Kaazing’s customers include one of the world’s largest energy-producing and trading companies, three of the world’s top ten banks, one of America’s top three professional sports franchises, one of Europe’s most sophisticated rail transportation networks and two of the top three transportation companies in the World.

Kaazing: https://kaazing.com DisasterAWARE Enterprise: http://disasteraware.com

Press Contact:
Kaazing – Virve Virtanen, +1 914 536 3712
virve.virtanen@kaazing.com

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Full article here.

Find out more about DisasterAWARE Enterprise and how it can help protect people, property and production.

The post Disaster tech being developed, advanced to improve destruction prevention appeared first on Kaazing.

Increasing awareness of disaster preparedness—making sure decision makers at every level know about life-saving tools and resources—is the impetus for PDC’s partnership project with Indonesia’s national disaster management organization, Badan Nasional Penanggulangan Bencana (BNPB). The first of its kind for Indonesia, PDC helped launch a national publicity campaign promoting the use of the country’s InAWARE system for early warning and multi-hazard monitoring. Designed to reach disaster management personnel employed by BNPB and their subnational disaster management counterpart, BPBD, the campaign is aimed at increasing awareness and use of InAWARE within all 34 provinces that govern more than 14,000 islands and protect over 300 million people.

This short video was made to help people understand InAWARE’s capabilities:

The custom software system InAWARE, powered by PDC’s DisasterAWARE platform, was first deployed in partnership with the Government of Indonesia under funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development Office of Foreign Disater Assistance (USAID/OFDA) in 2014.

Kaazing is proud to provide commercial global organisations with access to the same level of hazard intelligence through their partnership with PDC. Find out more about DisasterAWARE Enterprise and how it can help protect people, property and production.

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Read their post entitled Kaazing: Helping Organizations Transform for a Real Time World.

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