# Streaming Ecosystem besides Kinesis

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#### The Extended Streaming Ecosystem

**Amazon MSK (Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka)**

* **What it is:** Managed Kafka.
* **The Context:** Kinesis is AWS's *proprietary* version of Kafka. MSK is actual open-source Kafka managed by AWS.
* **Data Engineer Note:** If you are building a new system on AWS, you usually choose Kinesis because it's easier. If you are migrating an existing Kafka cluster from on-premise, you choose MSK.
* **Equivalents:**
  * **GCP:** Pub/Sub is the native rival, but GCP often partners with Confluent Cloud for Kafka.
  * **Azure**: Azure Event Hubs (which has a "Kafka Compatibility" mode).

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