GenAI Demo with Kafka, Flink, LangChain and OpenAI
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GenAI Demo with Kafka, Flink, LangChain and OpenAI

Generative AI (GenAI) enables automation and innovation across industries. This blog post explores a simple but powerful architecture and demo for the combination of Python, and LangChain with OpenAI LLM, Apache Kafka for event streaming and data integration, and Apache Flink for stream processing. The use case shows how data streaming and GenAI help to correlate data from Salesforce CRM, searching for lead information in public datasets like Google and LinkedIn, and recommending ice-breaker conversations for sales reps.
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How Intersport uses Apache Kafka as Database with Compacted Topic in Retail
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How the Retailer Intersport uses Apache Kafka as Database with Compacted Topic

Compacted Topic is a feature of Apache Kafka to persist and query the latest up-to-date event of a Kafka Topic. The log compaction and key/value search is simple, cost-efficient and scalable. This blog post shows in a success story of Intersport how some use cases store data long term in Kafka with no other database. The retailer requires accurate stock info across the supply chain, including the point of sale (POS) in all international stores.
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How Michelin improves Aftermarket Sales and Customer Service with Data Streaming

Aftermarket sales and customer service require the right information at the right time to make context-specific decisions. This post explains the modernization of supply chain business process choreography based on the real-life use case of Michelin, a tire manufacturer in France. Data Streaming with Apache Kafka enables true decoupling, domain-driven design, and data consistency across real-time and batch systems. Common business goals drove them: Increase customer retention, increase revenue, reduce costs, and improve time to market for innovation.
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The State of Data Streaming for Retail in 2023
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The State of Data Streaming for Retail

This blog post explores the state of data streaming for the retail industry with omnichannel customer experiences, hybrid shopping models, and hyper-personalized recommendations. Data streaming allows integrating and correlating data in real time at any scale. I explore customer stories from Walmart, Albertsons, Otto, AO.com, and more, including a slide deck and on-demand video recording.
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The Daily Life of a Field CTO
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The Daily Life of a Field CTO

Field CTO is a job role that comes up more and more in software companies. There is no standard definition for this job role. As I regularly get the question about what a Field CTO does, this blog post summarizes a few general characteristics and then explores my daily life as a Field CTO. The post concludes with the answer to how you can also become a Field CTO at a software company in your career.
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Apache Kafka to Transform Retail and Shopping with the Live Commerce Metaverse
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Kafka for Live Commerce to Transform the Retail and Shopping Metaverse

Live commerce combines instant purchasing of a featured product and audience participation. This blog post explores the need for real-time data streaming with Apache Kafka between applications to enable live commerce across online stores and brick & mortar stores across regions, countries, and continents in any retail business. The discussion covers several buildings blocks of a live commerce enterprise architecture, including transactional data processing, omnichannel, natural language processing, augmented reality, edge computing, and more.
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