We want the seamless Netflix experience.
The days of waiting for the next episode to be aired or standing in line to get tickets at the movie theatre are behind us. We have a variety of options to choose from, and genres of movies and series are recommended to us based on what we have already watched. Our Netflix feed is personalised according to our likes and dislikes mapping out our personalities on the screen.
How is this possible? With data.
Data represents who we are.
As is common knowledge in the Data world, Data is often stuck and siloed in business areas and not leveraged the way it should be. When data is siloed, businesses lose the benefits of leveraging deep insights on their customers at the point in time when it is most valuable; “the moment of value”. This is often referred to as contextual value and can only be extracted when the data is processed “in motion” as opposed to “at rest”. Through data and event streaming, your data is set into motion to understand your customers better and create a personalised experience. Netflix, LinkedIn and Walmart, to name a few, can only do what they do by enabling Event streaming and setting data into motion.
Synthesis teamed up with Confluent as an early adopter of Apache Kafka to map out events within businesses to help create personalised journeys for customers. If you knew the state of every event in your bank, and could reason on top of that data, what problems would you solve, or opportunities would you capitalise on?
“A central nervous system for your organisation will provide the right event data, in the right format, at the right time, for consumption anywhere and at any scale.”, says Darren Bak, Synthesis – Head of Intelligent Data.
The entire journey of the event is mapped out with insights from the data generated at every step. Apache Kafka correlates and joins events together in real-time to process multiple concurrent sources of data, where businesses not only gain insight through the journey but process huge streams of data and build real time AI and redundancy.
“Our partners are essential in supporting Confluent’s mission to bring the power of Kafka and Data in Motion to companies of all sizes across the globe. We are excited to collaborate with the Synthesis team to provide further value for our customers in the Netherlands.”, says Dick Lans, Confluent, Regional Director, Netherlands.
Since 2018, Synthesis has been a Consulting and System Integration Focus Partner to Confluent and has built a team of Confluent Certified Kafka Engineers that have deployed Confluent in self-managed scenarios including Kubernetes as well as a Service in the Cloud. Synthesis also provide technical training in Apache Kafka and supports Kafka environments and solutions on-premise and as an AWS cloud service, including containerised architectures.
“Synthesis is Confluent’s trusted partner, having successfully established a data streaming platform that sets Data in Motion across organisations” – Jack Bingham, Confluent, Enterprise Account Executive, UKI & Africa.
This year Synthesis has been afforded the opportunity to present at the Kafka Summit 2023 in London, where some of its Data Streaming experts will be sharing their experience of building and deploying Kafka based solutions across a global client base.
Synthesis is making its mark in Europe and has setup it’s European base in the Netherlands, to further extend its global footprint.
“Our European base in the Netherlands, enables us to further build in-country capability and skills to deliver to a European & UK client base. This further extends our global capabilities and brings our clients access to a global talent pool, whilst also providing highly competitive pricing options.”, says Keith Milner, Synthesis – Executive Head International Expansion & Strategy.
Synthesis already has a team of Confluent trained and certified engineers based in Netherlands, as well as Synthesis Labs, the research & innovation hub that drives the emerging technology and product incubation of the company.
“We’re standing on the threshold of a new era where data becomes hyper-personalised and hyper-contextual. We must shift our view from thinking about big chunks of data to zooming in on individual events as they occur. It’s about People & Moments. Relevant information needs to be processed right then and there; we cannot have data sitting in external systems because we cannot afford to wait for them to catch up. It must be in working memory. It’s like having a conversation versus sending an email – completely different experiences, and both increasingly necessary to build relationships with your customers.”, says Tom, Synthesis – Chief Disruption Officer.
Why choose Synthesis as your data partner?
As a global partner for Confluent, we have a proven record of accelerating time to value in our clients’ businesses. We now have extensive experience in building systems that are highly scalable and reliable that unlock the value in data within a business.
Projects that include Kafka and Event Streaming based solutions include Vitality Group, Discovery Group, Vodacom, Absa Bank, Capitec Bank, Sanlam Insurance, Bankserv, The Foschini Group and Easy Equities (Purple Group).
Synthesis has had a successful long-term partnership with the Vitality Group where Synthesis manages the Group’s services. Vitality Group, a global company that spans across several countries, needed assistance moving onto a new event streaming platform. The Group receives myriads of messages per second through smart devices when its customers exercise globally. The event streaming capability is a cheaper, scalable and more reliable platform. Synthesis Event Streaming experts were tagged in, and the team helped replace this platform within budgets and timelines. Kafka, Event streaming allowed Vitality Group to improve reliability due to built-in error handling, scalability and retry functionality. It also has smart message deduplication functionality which allows Vitality Group to ingest more customer data in a shorter period and eliminate message lag. Kafka is also enabling their shared value promise through gained fitness using IOT fitness data.
“As the event streaming capability was a new technology being introduced into my team, my existing developers had very little practical exposure to the product. Through our arrangement with Synthesis, we were able to very quickly onboard effective engineers who were able to assist us with defining the solution, rolling it out, and optimising the throughput of the solution while still being able to deliver the project on time.”, says Nic Mouyis, Vitality Group Senior Development Manager.
Synthesis Intelligent Data offers end-to-end solutions across the data journey, incorporating; Data engineering and streaming, Cloud Deployments, Data Analytics, AI and Machine Learning. Confluent makes it easy to connect your apps, systems, and organisation with real-time data flow and processing.
As an international Confluent partner and subscription reseller, we can help you set your data in motion.
Start your journey today and have a conversation with us.
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For more information on the innovative work Synthesis has done for its clients, contact us on 087 654 3300
About Synthesis
Synthesis uses innovative technology solutions to provide businesses with a competitive edge today. Synthesis focuses on banking and financial institutions, retail, healthcare and telecommunications sectors in South Africa and other emerging markets.
In 2017 Capital Appreciation Limited, a JSE-listed Fintech company, acquired 100 percent of Synthesis. Following the acquisition, Synthesis remains an independent operating entity within the Capital Appreciation Group providing Cloud, Digital, Payments and RegTech services as well as corporate learning solutions through the Synthesis Academy.
