Confluent, the data streaming pioneer, announced new Confluent
Cloud capabilities that make it easier to process and secure data for faster insights and
decision-making. Snapshot queries, new in Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink, bring together
real-time and historic data processing to make artificial intelligence (AI) agents and analytics
smarter. Confluent Cloud network (CCN) routing simplifies private networking for Apache Flink,
and IP Filtering adds access controls for publicly accessible Flink pipelines, securing data for
agentic AI and analytics.
“Agentic AI is moving from hype to enterprise adoption as organizations look to gain a
competitive edge and win in today’s market,” said Shaun Clowes, Chief Product Officer at
Confluent. “But without high-quality data, even the most advanced systems can’t deliver real
value. The new Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink ® features make it possible to blend real-time
and batch data so that enterprises can trust their agentic AI to drive real change.”
Bridging the Real-Time and Batch Divide
“The rise of agentic AI orchestration is expected to accelerate, and companies need to start
preparing now,” said Stewart Bond, Vice President of Data Intelligence and Integration Software
at IDC. “To unlock agentic AI’s full potential, companies should seek solutions that unify
disparate data types, including structured, unstructured, real-time, and historical information, in
a single environment. This allows AI to derive richer insights and drive more impactful
outcomes.”
Agentic AI is driving widespread change in business operations by increasing efficiency and
powering faster decision-making by analyzing data to uncover valuable trends and insights.
However, for AI agents to make the right decisions, they need historical context about what
happened in the past and insight into what’s happening right now. For example, for fraud
detection, banks need real-time data to react in the moment and historical data to see if a
transaction fits a customer’s usual patterns. Hospitals need real-time vitals alongside patient
medical history to make safe, informed treatment decisions. But to leverage both past and
present data, teams often have to use separate tools and develop manual workarounds,
resulting in time-consuming work and broken workflows. Additionally, it’s important to secure the
data that’s used for analytics and agentic AI; this ensures trustworthy results and prevents
sensitive data from being accessed.
Snapshot Queries Unify Processing on One Platform
In Confluent Cloud, snapshot queries let teams unify historical and streaming data with a single
product and language, enabling consistent, intelligent experiences for both analytics and agentic
AI. With seamless Tableflow integration, teams can easily gain context from past data.
Snapshot queries allow teams to explore, test, and analyze data without spinning up new
workloads. This makes it easier to supply agents with context from historic and real-time data or
conduct an audit to understand key trends and patterns. Snapshot queries are now available in
early access.
CCN Routing Simplifies Private Networking for Flink
Private networking is important for organizations that require an additional layer of security.
Confluent offers a streamlined private networking solution by reusing existing CCNs that teams
have already created for Apache Kafka ® clusters. Teams can use CCN to securely connect their
data to any Flink workload, such as streaming pipelines, AI agents, or analytics. CCN routing is
now generally available on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in all regions where Flink is
supported.
IP Filtering Protects Flink Workloads in Hybrid Environments
Many organizations that operate in hybrid environments need more control over which data can
be publicly accessed. IP Filtering for Flink helps teams restrict internet traffic to allowed IPs and
improves visibility into unauthorized access attempts by making it easier to track the attempts.
IP Filtering is generally available for all Confluent Cloud users.
Now organizations can more easily turn the promise of agentic AI into a competitive advantage.
To learn more about the other new Confluent Cloud features, including the Snowflake source
connector, cross-cloud Cluster Linking, and new Schema Registry private networking features,