For example, when Confluent is used with VertexAI, customers can build powerful generative AI applications leveraging Google Cloud's foundational models and augmenting them with real-time context. Also, Confluent's fully managed data streaming platform significantly alleviates the operational burdens, risks and costs of managing Apache Kafka ®. "A lot of the cost savings over the last twelve months have come from moving into a more efficient way of developing applications with stream processing," said Rob Contreras, Technical Architect, Toolstation. "With Confluent's Google Cloud integration built in, we get consistent pricing that makes it easier—which is important, because we have a budget, and we're a low-margin business." "We spent a lot of time managing our own brokers and databases and wanted to offload some of that. Confluent Cloud was the clear choice for us," says Jack Butler, Software Architect, Cargo Signal.