# Real-Time IoT Data Architecture with Kafka

What does it actually take to move real-time IoT data from thousands of devices through MQTT and Kafka without compromising reliability, security, or control?

Conduktor and Steadforce break down a real-world IoT architecture built for critical infrastructure, and the decisions that determine whether it holds up when connectivity fails, data changes, or systems go down.

### When failure has real-world consequences

In IoT, a dropped message isn't always just a dropped message.

The architecture explored in this session supports a solar fleet feeding energy into a power grid. Measurements need to move from the edge into the streaming platform, while critical commands need to make their way back.

So what happens when part of that data path fails at exactly the wrong moment? That's where architecture decisions around MQTT, Kafka, networking, processing, and resilience start to matter.

### Follow the data from edge to lake

**IoT Devices → MQTT → Bridge → Kafka → Stream Processing → Data Lake**

Stéphane Derosiaux from Conduktor joins Stephan Schiffner and Alfred Schmid from Steadforce to dissect the architecture layer by layer, including questions like:

- Where should MQTT end and Kafka begin?
- What happens when devices lose connectivity?
- Where should data validation and transformation happen?
- How do you design for restricted or air-gapped environments?
- When does stream processing make sense, and when is it unnecessary overhead?
- How do you balance open source, managed services, and operational responsibility?

Rather than presenting one "perfect" architecture, they discuss the trade-offs they've encountered building these systems in the field.

### Built for teams where real-time actually matters

This session is for platform engineers, architects, data engineers, and technical leaders working with Kafka, IoT, manufacturing, energy, or other environments where availability and data reliability are critical.

See how the architecture comes together and hear the decisions behind it.

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