Customer Story

Retail: 99% Faster Kafka Onboarding

Fortune 500 retailer cut Kafka onboarding from 3 weeks to 1 hour. Chaos testing and 350+ users with Conduktor.

Industry Retail

Use Cases

Developer onboarding
Chaos testing
Hybrid governance model

Outcomes

Onboarding reduced from 3 weeks to 1 hour
350+ Kafka users across teams

"Developers get a working Kafka environment within an hour of requesting it. Conduktor has become the hub for hundreds of users to interact with our Kafka resources."

Executive Summary

The product teams at this leading retailer used Conduktor to troubleshoot and stress-test Kafka infrastructure, create a hybrid governance model that balances autonomy and centralization, reduce onboarding time from three weeks to one hour, and increase adoption to nearly 350 Kafka users.

With hundreds of stores and tens of thousands of employees nationwide, this Fortune 500 retailer relies heavily on real-time data to power everything from online checkout to inventory sync and in-store experiences. Streaming isn't optional; it's mission-critical.

Challenge

Apache Kafka sits at the center of that mission-critical system. But as Kafka adoption expanded across teams, so did the complexity:

Slow onboarding — New teams waited up to three weeks to get started with Kafka
Operational complexity — Deploying and maintaining Kafka connectors was difficult
Revenue risk — The checkout function directly impacted revenue, and any failure could mean lost sales

"We had some boilerplate configs and reference architectures, but they only go so far—there was a lot of trial and error." - Senior Software Engineer

The retailer also launched an initiative to modernize its online checkout. Teams needed to test Kafka components under real-world conditions to ensure they wouldn't break during peak seasons.

"If customers have to go through the checkout process more than once, they'll get frustrated and give up. We're talking about a direct correlation to lost money." - Manager of Systems Engineering

Solution

One hour onboarding

Before Conduktor, getting a team up and running on Kafka could take up to three weeks. Today, it takes one hour.

Conduktor's model of centralized governance and decentralized self-service dramatically reduces turnaround times while increasing autonomy for developer teams without compromising security or standardization.

"We had an intern who was brand new to the Kafka space. She went from having no knowledge of Kafka to having a working connector in a week—and it was one we had never used before." - Manager

Chaos testing for checkout

The checkout team now uses Conduktor for chaos testing to validate Kafka resilience before going live.

"They wanted a way to test without causing outages across different areas. Now they've used it to test new features while keeping our shared production service healthy." - Engineer

"For e-commerce modernization, the entire order processing mechanism hinges on Kafka availability. Instead of having to react, we now use Conduktor to be proactive." - Senior Software Engineer

Seamless integrations

Conduktor integrates with Azure, SSO for auditing and access control, and Terraform/GitHub for programmatically provisioning and automating Kafka resources.

Results

99% faster onboarding — From 3 weeks to 1 hour
350+ Kafka users — Including product owners and directors who monitor real-time operations during peak seasons
Chaos testing in place — Protecting the checkout experience and avoiding costly outages
Faster delivery cycles — Reliable workflows with clear visibility and fewer bottlenecks

"Conduktor definitely eases adoptability. It enhances our onboarding process and allows it to be a smooth transition from not knowing Kafka to having everything you need right here." - Manager of Systems Engineering

What's Next

The team is exploring disaster recovery and active-active Kafka architectures using Conduktor—so even in a failover scenario, apps can switch clusters without disruption.

They're also exploring new connectors to stream real-time data into recommendation engines and personalization programs as part of AI initiatives, helping shoppers find relevant products and increasing store revenue.

Frequently Asked Questions

How fast can new teams get started with Kafka using Conduktor?

With Conduktor's centralized governance and decentralized user experience, new teams can go from zero to a working Kafka environment in just one hour—down from three weeks.

What is chaos testing for Kafka?

Chaos testing validates Kafka resilience by intentionally testing failure scenarios. This retailer uses Conduktor to test new features while keeping shared production services healthy.

How does Conduktor integrate with CI/CD pipelines?