Unified Real-Time
Data Management
Govern, share and secure Real-Time Data at scale. Turn operational data streams into business-ready real-time Data Products that power apps, AI agents and external partners.


Zilla Platform
Kafka's Missing Management Layer
Bring governance, observability, and self-service access to your Apache Kafka® deployment. Govern, structure and secure data streams, keeping bad ones out while ensuring good ones are readily available to drive business.
Accelerate Innovation through reusable, high-quality Data Products.
Increase Operational Efficiency by cutting back middleware and integration efforts.
Enhance Security and Compliance by "shifting-left" governance and processing.



Core Capabilities
Control Without Stack-Bloat
The Zilla Platform combines a stateless, Kafka-native gateway that governs access to your Kafka clusters with a lightweight management console that unifies control, observability, and self-service discovery.
API Data Products
Package Kafka topics as versioned, discoverable data products with rate limits, subscriptions, and API key access — like a traditional API gateway for event streams.
Kafka Governance
Enforce topic naming, retention policies, producer/consumer rules, and cluster-level guardrails. Run policies in audit or enforcement mode.
Schema Validation
Streaming JSON, Avro, and Protobuf validation at the gateway. Prevent poison-pill messages and bad data from entering your pipelines, even without a Schema Registry.
Multi-Protocol Kafka Access
Gateway handles HTTP, gRPC, SSE, and MQTT protocol translation to Kafka. Directly expose Kafka to non-Kafka clients without connectors or ETL pipelines.
Self-Service Developer Portal
Developers discover data products, register applications, create subscriptions, and get API keys — all without tickets or waiting on the platform team.
Observability & Policy
Kafka client error diagnostics, protocol-level metrics, Grafana integration, and OTLP export. Alerting when metrics exceed thresholds.



Performance
Performance is Non-Negotiable
Most Kafka proxies and gateways are wrappers around generic networking libraries — adequate for moderate workloads, but a liability when performance, stability, and latency are non-negotiable. Zilla is different. Every layer of the runtime was purpose-built for real-time data streaming.
Added proxy latency
Near-zero latency tax
Persistent state in data plane
Fully stateless gateway
Throughput vs. alternatives
Under equivalent load
Optimized schema validation
Wire-speed JSON/Avro/Protobuf
Zilla's core is a custom-built, event-driven engine — not a wrapper around Netty, Apache MINA, or off-the-shelf networking libraries. Every byte is processed through a purpose-built pipeline designed for minimal overhead and maximum throughput. The result is a runtime that handles millions of concurrent connections with predictable, low-latency performance.
Unlike proxies assembled from generic components, Zilla's engine was designed from the start for the specific demands of real-time data streaming — where every microsecond of added latency has a cost.

Zilla moves data between protocols without unnecessary serialization or buffering. Messages flow from ingress to Kafka (and back) involves zero cross-core cordination, minimizing memory allocation and garbage collection pressure. This is critical for high-throughput environments where traditional proxies become bottlenecks.
In financial services workloads, this means market data and trade events flow through Zilla with near-zero latency tax — the proxy becomes invisible to the application.

Schema validation is typically a throughput killer. Zilla uses SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) optimized parsers for JSON, Avro, and Protobuf that validate messages at wire speed. This means you get data quality enforcement without sacrificing performance — something most gateways force you to choose between.
Streaming validation without full message buffering. Messages are validated as they arrive, not after they're fully received — reducing latency and memory footprint simultaneously.

The Zilla Gateway maintains no persistent state. No embedded database, no local disk requirements, no session stores. This makes it trivially scalable — add or remove instances without coordination, rebalancing, or data migration. Failed instances are replaced instantly with zero impact.
Contrast this with competing gateways that require persistent storage layers for their data plane. Statelessness isn't just an architectural nicety — it eliminates an entire class of operational failures.


Streaming-Native
Unlike proxies assembled from generic components, Zilla's engine was designed from the start for the specific demands of real-time data streaming — where every microsecond of added latency has a cost.

Multi-Core Optimized
In financial services workloads, this means market data and trade events flow through Zilla with near-zero latency tax — the proxy becomes invisible to the application.

SIMD-Optimized Parsing
Streaming validation without full message buffering. Messages are validated as they arrive, not after they're fully received — reducing latency and memory footprint simultaneously.

Stateless Runtime
Contrast this with competing gateways that require persistent storage layers for their data plane. Statelessness isn't just an architectural nicety — it eliminates an entire class of operational failures.
Purpose-Built for Industry
In industries like financial services, every microsecond of latency can translate directly to cost. Zilla's architecture was designed for environments where performance is one of the primary requirements. Market data distribution, trade event streaming, and real-time partner integration all depend on a runtime that performs predictably under pressure. Baader Bank chose Zilla for exactly this reason: enterprise-grade performance with zero operational compromise.

Use Cases
Power Apps, Team, Partners & AI. Streamline Kafka Governance.
Kafka Self-Service Platform
Enable engineering teams to independently provision, configure, and consume Kafka data through API data products — without relying on central platform teams for manual setup or approvals.
Decentralize Kafka access across teams
Eliminate ticket-based provisioning
Maintain governance and guardrails
Event-Driven Partner Integration
Expose Kafka-based data products to external partners securely, with rate limiting, access control, and API key management — without exposing brokers.
Onboard partners in days, not months
Enforce per-partner quotas and isolation
Clean onboarding/offboarding lifecycle
Future-Proof Platform & Migration
Decouple Kafka clients from brokers via API data products. Switch Kafka vendors or configurations without any client-side changes.
Swap Kafka clusters transparently
No client reconfiguration required
Reduce vendor lock-in risk
Event-Driven Applications
Enable non-Kafka developers to access real-time streams through familiar HTTP, gRPC, SSE, or MQTT interfaces — backed by Kafka.
No Kafka expertise required for consumers
Multiple protocol support
Real-time data for every application
Financial Serivces
Securely expose Kafka-based financial data as governed, real-time APIs for market data distribution, trade/payment processing, and ecosystem integration.
Expose Kafka data as secure SSE, WebSocket or Kafka APIs for partners and apps
Enforce governance with schemas, access control, and auditability
Enable low-latency distribution of market and payment data at scale
Industrials & Manufacturing
Ingest IoT and machine data into Kafka and expose it as secure, real-time APIs, enabling predictive maintenance, seamless integration, and scalable, governed manufacturing operations.
Ingest IoT data directly into Kafka — no MQTT broker + Kafka Connect needed
Expose real-time data via APIs for integration and monitoring
Enable predictive maintenance and scalable, governed operations
Online Gaming & Sportsbook
Distribute real-time gaming and betting data from Kafka to end users via scalable APIs, enabling live odds, low-latency updates, and seamless fan experiences at global scale.
Stream real-time game and betting data to users with low latency
Scale live odds, events, and updates to millions of concurrent users
Secure and govern data streams with access control and auditability





Product Tiers
From Gateway to Platform
OPEN SOURCE
Zilla Gateway
Expose Kafka to non-Kafka clients through stateless APIs. HTTP, gRPC, SSE, and MQTT protocol translation to Kafka.
Protocol translation
Declarative config
Stateless runtime
COMMERCIAL
Zilla Plus Gateway
Everything in open source, plus Kafka-native proxying, custom domains, and enterprise schema and monitoring integrations.
Kafka client proxying
Custom domain names
AWS Glue, Confluent SR
CloudWatch, Syslog
ENTERPRISE
Zilla Platform
Full management control plane. API data products, governance, self-service catalog, observability, and policy enforcement.
API data products & catalog
Kafka governance policies
Self-service developer portal
Unified observability

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