Govern, Share & Secure Real-Time Data at Scale
Turn Kafka into an operational platform. Package streams as governed data products, enforce policies on Kafka-native clients, and deliver real-time data to apps, partners and AI agents through a single management layer.
Powering Global Data Driven Organizations
Powering Global Data Driven Organizations
Zilla Platform
Kafka's Missing Management Layer
Bring governance, observability, and self-service access to your Apache Kafka deployment. Govern and secure data streams for both Kafka-native clients and non-Kafka consumers.
Accelerate Innovation
Secure, self-service data products that power internal teams, external partners, and AI agent workflows.Increase Operational Efficiency
Eliminate middleware, custom proxies, and ticket-based provisioning. One platform for Kafka access, governance, and observability.Strengthen Governance & Compliance
Shift-left enforcement at the gateway edge. PII classification, field-level encryption, schema validation, and audit trails across every endpoint.
Core Capabilities
Control Without Stack-Bloat
A stateless, Kafka-native gateway that governs access to your clusters, combined with a 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, but for event streams.
Kafka Governance
Govern Kafka-native clients directly. Enforce topic naming, producer/consumer runtime policies, schema compliance, and rate limits without requiring clients to change how they connect.
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
Expose Kafka to any client via HTTP, gRPC, SSE, MQTT, or native Kafka protocol — without connectors, ETL pipelines, or custom consumer services. MCP support coming soon for AI agent connectivity.
Self-Service Developer Portal
Developers discover data products, register applications, create subscriptions, and get API keys or mTLS certificates — without tickets or waiting on the platform team.
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Data Privacy & Encryption
Classify PII and sensitive fields. Enforce policy-based encryption and redaction at the gateway. Field-level encryption with external KMS integration. Unauthorized consumers see redacted data.
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
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, Teams, Partners & AI Agents
Streamline Kafka governance and unlock real-time data for every consumer.
Kafka Self-Service Platform
Enable engineering teams to independently discover, subscribe to, and consume Kafka data — through both API data products and governed Kafka Endpoints — without relying on the platform team for manual setup.
Decentralize Kafka access across teams via self-service catalog
Eliminate ticket-based provisioning for topics, credentials, and schemas
Maintain governance guardrails through policy enforcement at the gateway
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 tenant isolation
Clean onboarding/offboarding lifecycle with managed credentials
Future-Proof Platform & Migration
Decouple Kafka clients from brokers via API data products and Kafka Endpoints. Switch Kafka vendors, configurations, or cloud regions without any client-side changes.
Swap Kafka clusters transparently behind the gateway
No client reconfiguration required — abstracted bootstrap servers
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.
Web & mobile apps consume via REST and SSE
IoT devices publish and subscribe via MQTT — no broker needed
AI agents access Kafka data as tool-callable resources via MCP
Financial Services
Securely expose Kafka-based financial data as governed, real-time APIs for market data distribution, trade and payment processing, and ecosystem integration — with compliance controls built in.
Expose Kafka data as secure SSE, WebSocket, or Kafka APIs for partners and apps
Enforce governance with schemas, access control, encryption, and audit trails
Enable low-latency distribution of market and payment data at scale
PII classification and field-level encryption for regulatory compliance
Industrials & Manufacturing
Ingest IoT and machine data into Kafka and expose it as secure, real-time APIs. Native MQTT-to-Kafka protocol translation at the gateway — no MQTT broker, no Kafka Connect, no custom middleware.
Ingest IoT data directly into Kafka — sensors publish MQTT, Zilla maps to topics
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
“Zilla Plus gave us exactly what we needed — secure, Kafka-native connectivity to our private MSK clusters from anywhere, without compromising security or building custom integrations. It’s accelerated our project delivery and simplified how we connect critical business systems across our ecosystem.”
Karthik Rajendran
Platform Owner, KONE
Key Results
Connected MSK clusters securely without public exposure
Accelerated project delivery across SAP & third-party systems
Reduced dev overhead by eliminating custom integrations
“Zilla’s extensive protocol support, integrations with AWS services such as Glue Schema Registry and Secrets Manager, as well as robust logging capabilities, gives me confidence it can be a one-stop solution for all of our external MSK integration needs.”
Gordon Zardoya
Solution Architect, N Brown-Castle Fintech
Key Results
Secure endpoints enabled fast partner integrations
Lead time cut, team focused on Kafka design
Unified interface across Kafka and non-Kafka apps
Product Tiers
From Gateway to Platform
OPEN SOURCE
Zilla Gateway
Expose Kafka to non-Kafka clients through stateless APIs. Protocol translation for HTTP, gRPC, SSE, and MQTT.
Multi-protocol translation
Declarative YAML config
Stateless runtime
Schema validation
COMMERCIAL
Zilla Plus Gateway
Everything in open source, plus Kafka-native proxying, custom domains, and enterprise integrations.
Kafka client proxying
Custom domain names
AWS Glue, Confluent SR
CloudWatch, Syslog
ENTERPRISE
Zilla Platform
Full management control plane. API data products, Kafka Endpoints, governance, self-service catalog, and observability.
API Data Products & catalog
Kafka Endpoints with policy enforcement
Self-service developer portal
Kafka governance policies
Data privacy & field-level encryption
Unified observability & diagnostics
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