News
Dec 24, 2025
News
Data
Global
StreamNative Named Contender in Forrester Wave Streaming Data Platforms Report
NewDecoded
4 min read
Image by StreamNative
Recognition in First Year of Evaluation
StreamNative has been recognized as a Contender in The Forrester Wave™: Streaming Data Platforms, Q4 2025, marking its inaugural appearance in the analyst evaluation. The report assessed 15 major streaming data platform providers, with StreamNative receiving the highest possible scores of 5 out of 5 in both messaging and resource optimization criteria within the current offering category. The cloud-native platform, built on Apache Pulsar and the Ursa Engine, operates on a leaderless, lakehouse-native architecture that aims to eliminate the inefficiencies of traditional systems. According to Forrester, StreamNative "is a good fit for enterprises that want an Apache Pulsar implementation that is also compatible with Kafka APIs."
Enterprise Adoption Across Industries
Global companies including Cisco, Iterable, and FICO are already using StreamNative to power real-time operations. Cisco leverages the platform to support 245 million connected devices for IoT telemetry, while Iterable processes billions of events daily for customer engagement, and FICO relies on it for real-time fraud detection pipelines. Forrester's customer feedback highlighted that users "appreciate the lower infrastructure costs that result from StreamNative's cost-efficient, Kafka-compatible architecture" and noted "excellent support responsiveness." The platform claims to enable enterprises to operate at just 5% of the cost of legacy systems while unifying streaming and batch data in open formats like Apache Iceberg and Delta Lake.
Platform Architecture and Deployment
StreamNative's founders created Apache Pulsar, positioning the company as the primary vendor behind the open-source messaging and streaming engine. The platform offers multiple deployment models including serverless, dedicated, BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud), and private cloud options, backed by a 99.95% SLA and 24/7 support. Forrester noted that StreamNative's "focus on scalability and resource optimization, while its investments in Pulsar's open-source ecosystem and performance optimization make it the primary platform for enterprises wishing to implement Pulsar." The evaluation also recognized the platform for supporting "use cases like real-time analytics and event-driven architectures with robust scalability."
Ongoing Innovation
The Ursa Engine, a core component of StreamNative's platform, recently won the Best Industry Paper award at the Very Large Databases (VLDB) Conference 2025. The company was also recognized as a Leader in the GigaOm Radar Report for Streaming Data Platforms in 2024. StreamNative competes in a market where players like Confluent hold Leader positions in the same Forrester evaluation. CEO Sijie Guo emphasized the platform's versatility in handling diverse workloads, from "millions of connected devices to real-time fraud detection pipelines," as the company continues to invest in enterprise features including enhanced security, schema registry, governance, and monitoring capabilities.
Decoded
StreamNative's Contender status reflects the evolving landscape of streaming data platforms, where Apache Pulsar is emerging as a credible alternative to Kafka-dominated architectures. The recognition arrives at a critical juncture for enterprises grappling with escalating infrastructure costs and the computational demands of real-time AI applications. By scoring highest in resource optimization, StreamNative signals a market shift toward cost-efficiency without sacrificing performance, particularly appealing as organizations seek to consolidate fragmented messaging systems. The platform's Kafka API compatibility offers a strategic migration path for enterprises locked into existing ecosystems, while its lakehouse-native architecture positions it at the intersection of streaming and analytics convergence. However, the Contender designation (versus Leader status held by rivals like Confluent) suggests StreamNative still needs to mature its enterprise tooling and ecosystem integrations to compete at the highest tier. For the broader data streaming industry, this evaluation underscores that architectural innovation and open-source foundations are no longer enough; success requires comprehensive governance, observability, and developer experience capabilities that match enterprise expectations. StreamNative's trajectory will test whether a leaner, cost-optimized approach can disrupt incumbents in a market increasingly defined by total platform capabilities rather than pure streaming performance.
