OSIsoft PI Archives - Kai Waehner

Replacing OT Middleware with Data Streaming using Kafka and Flink for Cloud-Native Industrial IoT with MQTT and OPC-UA

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11 minute read

Modernizing OT Middleware: The Shift to Open Industrial IoT Architectures with Data Streaming

ByKai Waehner
17. March 2025

Legacy OT middleware is struggling to keep up with real-time, scalable, and cloud-native demands. As industries shift toward event-driven architectures, companies are replacing vendor-locked, polling-based systems with Apache Kafka, MQTT, and OPC-UA for seamless OT-IT integration. Kafka serves as the central event backbone, MQTT enables lightweight device communication, and OPC-UA ensures secure industrial data exchange. This approach enhances real-time processing, predictive analytics, and AI-driven automation, reducing costs and unlocking scalable, future-proof architectures.

Smart Grid Energy Production and Distribution with Apache Kafka

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8 minute read

Apache Kafka for Smart Grid, Utilities and Energy Production

ByKai Waehner
14. January 2021
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The energy industry is changing from system-centric to smaller-scale and distributed smart grids and microgrids. These smart grids require a flexible, scalable, elastic, and reliable cloud-native infrastructure for real-time data integration and processing. This post explores use cases, architectures, and real-world deployments of event streaming with Apache Kafka in the energy industry to implement smart grids and real-time end-to-end integration.