Announcing Zilla Platform 1.0

Today, we’re proud to announce the release of Zilla Platform 1.0 — a foundational milestone that brings production-grade stability, centralized management, and self-service governance to Kafka-native API and data product management.

This release marks the transition of Zilla Platform from early adoption to full production readiness, enabling organizations to securely expose, govern, and operationalize real-time data at scale.

Zilla Platform 1.0 provides the operational foundation teams need to transform Kafka from an internal event backbone into a managed, discoverable, and consumable platform for real-time data products.

Why Zilla Platform exists

Apache Kafka has become the backbone of modern, real-time enterprises. It powers payment systems, financial trading platforms, IoT infrastructure, AI pipelines, and customer-facing applications.

But while Kafka excels at moving data, it was never designed to manage it as a product.

Organizations consistently face challenges such as:

• Making Kafka safely accessible across teams, partners, and environments
• Governing access and enforcing policies without slowing developers down
• Providing visibility into what data exists and how it can be used
• Operating Kafka integrations reliably across clusters, environments, and clouds

Zilla Platform solves this by introducing a streaming-native management and control plane for Kafka-based APIs and data products.

With Zilla Platform, Kafka becomes not just infrastructure, but a governed, self-service real-time data platform.

Built for production from day one

Zilla Platform 1.0 focuses on what matters most for real-world deployment: stability, operational reliability, and predictable behavior.

This release delivers:

• Protocol stability across Kafka and supported interfaces
• Hardened deployment workflows and configuration validation
• Improved deployment status reporting and operational visibility
• Platform-wide stability improvements and defect resolution

These enhancements ensure Zilla Platform can operate confidently in mission-critical production environments.

Centralized management plane for real-time data products

At the core of Zilla Platform 1.0 is a new centralized management plane, providing unified control over your real-time infrastructure.

Teams can now manage:

• Environments and deployments
• Applications and services
• Subscriptions and access
• Kafka service configurations
• Schema Registry integrations

This creates a single, authoritative control layer for governing and operating Kafka-based APIs and data products.

Instead of scattered scripts, ad-hoc ACLs, and manual configuration, organizations gain a structured, observable, and governable system of record.

Self-service API and data product catalog

One of the most important additions in this release is the self-service catalog.

This allows teams to:

• Discover available API and data products
• Request and obtain access through structured subscriptions
• Receive credentials and access in a controlled, auditable way

This transforms Kafka from a hidden internal system into a discoverable platform for reusable real-time capabilities.

Producers can publish data products. Consumers can subscribe. Governance is enforced automatically.

This is a foundational step toward treating real-time data as a first-class product inside the organization.

Enterprise-grade identity, access, and multi-environment management

Zilla Platform 1.0 introduces robust identity and access management designed for modern organizations.

New capabilities include:

• Team-based identity and entitlements
• User invitations and team membership management
• Fine-grained subscription-based access control
• Multi-environment support across multiple Kafka clusters

These features allow organizations to operate safely across:

• Development, staging, and production environments
• Multiple Kafka clusters
• Multiple teams and organizational units

This enables true enterprise-scale governance.

Production-ready Kubernetes and Amazon EKS support

Zilla Platform is designed for cloud-native deployment from the ground up.

With new Helm chart support for Amazon EKS and Kubernetes, teams can deploy and operate Zilla Platform using standard Kubernetes workflows.

Additional operational improvements include:

• Hardened Helm chart defaults optimized for production
• Improved configuration validation and error handling
• Reliable deployment workflows across environments
• Accurate deployment and environment status reporting

This makes Zilla Platform easier to deploy, operate, and scale in modern cloud infrastructure.

Secure Kafka integration with full authentication support

Zilla Platform 1.0 provides enhanced integration with Kafka and Schema Registry services, including support for:

• SASL authentication, including SASL/SCRAM
• Schema Registry configuration alongside Kafka services
• Improved ACL handling and access enforcement
• Reliable subscription key provisioning

These capabilities ensure secure, standards-based integration with existing Kafka environments.

No broker modifications required.

Operational stability and reliability improvements

This release includes numerous fixes and improvements to ensure predictable, reliable behavior in production environments, including:

• Resolution of multi-service deployment issues
• Improved access control handling
• Reliable subscription credential provisioning
• Stronger configuration validation
• Platform-wide stability and defect fixes

These enhancements reflect our focus on making Zilla Platform dependable for mission-critical workloads.

A foundation for the future of real-time data

Zilla Platform 1.0 establishes the foundation for a new model of real-time data management.

One where Kafka is not just infrastructure, but a governed, self-service platform for real-time APIs and data products.

Where teams can safely publish and consume real-time capabilities without operational friction.

Where governance is built-in, not bolted on.

And where real-time data becomes accessible, manageable, and scalable across the entire organization.

Available now — with a new, frictionless Quickstart

Zilla Platform 1.0 is available now.

To make getting started easier than ever, we’re also introducing a new and significantly improved Quickstart experience.

For the first time, you can try Zilla Platform immediately — no trial license and no subscription required.

The new Quickstart has been redesigned from the ground up to simplify onboarding and reduce time-to-value. In just a few minutes and a few guided steps, you can:

• Connect to Kafka
• Publish an API or data product
• Manage access and subscriptions
• Experience the full Zilla Platform workflow end-to-end

Try it for yourself: https://docs.aklivity.io/zilla-platform/latest/