Team Defence DI25: Streaming Data to Decisions - Delivering Real Situational Intelligence at the Speed of Command
About the Episode
In this session, Victoria Needham explores how Apache Kafka and Confluent are enabling defence organisations to achieve real-time situational intelligence through modern data streaming. The session begins by examining Kafka’s origins and its proven use across commercial and defence sectors, highlighting its role as a central nervous system for data – curating, processing and distributing information from a wide range of sources in real time.
The discussion reframes the traditional concept of ‘situational awareness’ as ‘situational intelligence’, with a focus on delivering timely, actionable insights to decision-makers operating in complex and high-stakes environments. Several defence-specific use cases are explored, including SIEM modernisation, cyber operations, and the extraction of data from legacy systems, all of which demonstrate Kafka’s ability to integrate with existing infrastructure and unlock value without requiring full system replacement.
Victoria also covers Kafka’s ability to operate effectively in disconnected environments, with examples such as edge deployments on devices as small as a Raspberry Pi, and ship-to-shore implementations for predictive maintenance and logistics. These examples illustrate how Kafka supports operational agility, even in bandwidth-constrained and mission-critical settings, while also enhancing data quality for AI and automation.
