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Amazon Kinesis

Amazon Kinesis

Overview

What is Amazon Kinesis?

Amazon Kinesis is a streaming analytics suite for data intake from video or other disparate sources and applying analytics for machine learning (ML) and business intelligence.

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Learn from top reviewers

Amazon Kinesis Review

Rating: 9 out of 10
September 1, 2020
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
We used Kinesis as the basis for information distribution for a mission-critical business operation. We expected a huge amount of mini events reporting information between a I...
Continue reading
Francisco Javier Castañeda Marroquín
General Manager - Corporate
CEO (Chief Executive Officer)
Global Bestlogistics Systems S.A. de C.V.
Amazon Kinesis1 year of experience

Using Kinesis to stream billions of messages in a day, over millions of connected devices on the field

Rating: 10 out of 10
October 16, 2019
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
Amazon Kinesis is being used to stream telemetry data from millions of connected devices on the field - helping to drive command and control use cases and also sensor data for...
Continue reading
Verified user
Executive
Amazon Kinesis2 years of experience

Don't confuse Kinesis with a Queue system.

Rating: 1 out of 10
August 22, 2018
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
We currently use Kinesis as a trigger for Amazon Lambda functions, however we're working at switching back to SQS since Lambda now works with SQS directly. We simply used Kine...
Continue reading
Verified user
C-Level Executive
Amazon Kinesis1 year of experience
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Pricing

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Amazon Kinesis Video Streams

$0.00850

Cloud
per GB data ingested / consumed

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams

$0.04

Cloud
per hour per stream

Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics

$0.11

Cloud
per hour

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Details

What is Amazon Kinesis?

Amazon Kinesis Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
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Comparisons

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Reviews From Top Reviewers

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(1-3 of 3)

Amazon Kinesis Review

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
September 01, 2020
FJ
Francisco Javier Castañeda Marroquín
CEO (Chief Executive Officer)
Global Bestlogistics Systems S.A. de C.V. (Information Technology & Services, 1-10 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
Amazon Kinesis
1 year of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We used Kinesis as the basis for information distribution for a mission-critical business operation. We expected a huge amount of mini events reporting information between a Iot of devices, databases, geo info systems, and web sites, as well as reporting (business intelligence). Kinesis was used as the messaging pipeline (nowadays streaming) that glued everything together.

Pros
  • Integrating with other Amazon services
  • Scaling requests
  • Totally serverless platform
  • Simple management
Cons
  • Extended fan-out is complicated to manage.
  • Documentation is confusing.
  • VPC integration
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon Kinesis is a great replacement for Kafka and it works better whenever the components of the solution are AWS based. Best if extended fan-out is not required, but still price-performance ratio is very good for simplifying maintenance.

I would go with a different option if the systems to be connected are legacy, for instance in the case of traditional messaging clients.
Amazon Kinesis Feature Ratings
Streaming Analytics (9)
42.22222222222222%
4.2
Real-Time Data Analysis
N/A
N/A
Visualization Dashboards
N/A
N/A
Data Ingestion from Multiple Data Sources
90%
9.0
Low Latency
90%
9.0
Integrated Development Tools
90%
9.0
Data wrangling and preparation
N/A
N/A
Linear Scale-Out
60%
6.0
Machine Learning Automation
N/A
N/A
Data Enrichment
50%
5.0
Return on Investment
  • Lower the cost of implementation.
  • Good scaling up
  • Simple integration, especially with Lambda
Alternatives Considered
Kinesis is oriented to streaming in a scalable way large volumes of information in real-time. Glue is more an ETL so it is not well suited for real-time applications while Beanstalk is more a simple container platform. Lambda could do the job but it would require a lot of programming to accomplish the same as Kinesis. In fact, our solution employed the four elements for different tasks but using Kinesis as the message bus.
Support Rating
7
The documentation was confusing and lacked examples. The streams suddenly stopped working with no explanation and there was no information in the logs. All these were more difficult when dealing with enhanced fan-out. In fact, we were about to abort the usage of Kinesis due to a misunderstanding with enhanced fan-out.
Other Software Used

Using Kinesis to stream billions of messages in a day, over millions of connected devices on the field

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized
October 16, 2019
Verified User
Executive in Information Technology
Consumer Goods Company, 10,001+ employees
Vetted Review
Verified User
Amazon Kinesis
2 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Amazon Kinesis is being used to stream telemetry data from millions of connected devices on the field - helping to drive command and control use cases and also sensor data for performance monitoring. Our volume is billions of messages per day, real-time, with aggressive requirements on response and processing time. All messages are stored in a big data structure and also two-way communication with a mobile app.
Pros
  • Processing huge loads of data
  • Integrating well with IoT Platform on Amazon
  • Integration with overall AWS Ecosystem
  • Scalability
Cons
  • Improve integration with AWS Lambda
  • Some duplicate records coming from the stream
Likelihood to Recommend
Perfect for real-time data processing and streaming. Also, there's no need for any specific setup - you just start using it immediately and it easily integrates with the rest of AWS capabilities (like Redshift), although integration with Lambda could be better. You can make your overall analytics landscape way simpler with Kineses even if you have non-Amazon solutions like Tableau. It all integrates really well!
Amazon Kinesis Feature Ratings
Streaming Analytics (6)
100%
10.0
Real-Time Data Analysis
100%
10.0
Data Ingestion from Multiple Data Sources
100%
10.0
Low Latency
100%
10.0
Integrated Development Tools
100%
10.0
Data wrangling and preparation
100%
10.0
Linear Scale-Out
100%
10.0
Return on Investment
  • Significantly reduced the cost of our IoT platform, compared to other Cloud providers.
  • Better user experience.
  • Enabled real "real-time analytics."
Alternatives Considered
The main benefit was around set up - incredibly easy to just start using Kinesis. Kinesis is a real-time data processing platform, while Kafka is more of a message queue system. If you only need a message queue from a limited source, Kafka may do the job. More complex use cases, with low latency, higher volume of data, real time decisions and integration with multiple sources and destination at a decent price, Kinesis is better.
Support Rating
10
When needed, Amazon engineers are accessible and provide a fast response. Documentation is good and has been improving a lot over the past couple of years.
Other Software Used

Don't confuse Kinesis with a Queue system.

Rating: 1 out of 10
Incentivized
August 22, 2018
Verified User
C-Level Executive in Information Technology
Computer Software Company, 1-10 employees
Vetted Review
Verified User
Amazon Kinesis
1 year of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We currently use Kinesis as a trigger for Amazon Lambda functions, however we're working at switching back to SQS since Lambda now works with SQS directly. We simply used Kinesis as a temporary method of plumbing requests from one Lambda function to another.

We also use it as a byproduct of using DynamoDB Streams, but only in so far as that's used under-the-hood to link changes from DynamoDB to a Lambda trigger.
Pros
  • Link DynamoDB change events directly to Lambda
  • Fast streaming of events
  • Easy to "tail" changes/latest events
Cons
  • Not a queue system, so little visibility into "backlog" if there is any
  • Confusing terminology to make sure events aren't missed
  • Sometimes didn't seem to trigger Lambda functions, or dropped events when a lot came in
Likelihood to Recommend
It's great for big data applications, where it's not as important to make sure each event is processed, but you're more looking for overall analytics and speed is more important than absolute detail. It's added quite a few features like analytics and other tools specifically designed around big data, but it's not the same thing as a queue system.

Originally we were forced into using Kinesis since Lambda didn't support SQS directly, but now that there is native SQS support for Lambda, we'll be switching almost all of our implementation over to use that instead. Kinesis has its strengths, but monitoring and error retry logic is not one of those.
Return on Investment
  • Caused us to need to re-engineer some basic re-try logic
  • Caused us to drop some content without knowing it
  • Made monitoring much more difficult
  • We eventually switched back to SQS because Kinesis is not the same as a Queue system
Alternatives Considered
  • Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)
Actually we didn't select Kinesis, we were forced into using it because SQS wasn't yet supported by Lambda. Unlike Kinesis, SQS supports both FIFO and standard queues which let us control order of events processed, as well as handle retry logic, failover logic, and set up CloudWatch Alarms when we have too many events in our backlog. It also lets us know when something didn't process properly and we can alert DevOps to that issue and/or retry the processes automatically.

With SQS, we have much more visibility then we ever did with Kinesis. This is very important to our use cases, as we aren't processing millions of events per second, but for us every event is very important.
Other Software Used
Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), Amazon DynamoDB, AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway
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