Amazon Kinesis: Definition, Services, Use Cases, and More

Amazon Kinesis is a real-time data streaming service that makes it easy to collect, process, and analyze data so you can get quick insights and react as fast as possible to new information.
With Amazon Kinesis you can ingest real-time data such as application logs, website clickstreams, IoT telemetry data, social media feeds, etc., into your databases, data lakes, and data warehouses. You can also build your own real-time applications using this data.
Looking to immediately get some deep info on Kinesis? Check out Cloud Academy’s Getting Started with Amazon Kinesis Learning Path, which includes courses, labs, and exams to fill your knowledge bucket.
Two key characteristics of Kinesis are that it enables you to process and analyze data as it arrives, and then it responds in real-time instead of having to wait until all your data is collected before the processing can begin. You can understand what Kinesis is designed to do by remembering that it can:
How you collect, store, process, and analyze your data is up to you — it can range from complete customization of the system to a turnkey approach using the PaaS offering.
People use Amazon Kinesis because it’s an effective, real-time analytics service — but why are we so concerned about real-time data?
The chart below shows the function and value of data over time.
The value of data to be preventative or predictive diminishes (rather quickly) over time. The data still has value, it just becomes useful for a different role — for carefully looking at past trends, as opposed to continually acting on what’s happening in the present moment.
Data shows that 20% of companies already have migrated to the cloud. If you already have your data living in robust, backed-up resources, it makes sense to use a service designed to play nicely with those resources. You can reduce your time to market and get valuable insights more quickly.
If you’re analyzing network data or anything that’s dynamic in nature, it’s important to be aware of cost concerns. You don’t want to commit to services that you don’t need, especially when your data can change at a moment’s notice. And you want to be prepared for spikes that will occur. Kinesis’s scalability helps you stay lean with costs and flexible with demand.
Use the AWS Console to quickly start up a Kinesis Firehose stream. In just a few clicks, you’ll be able to see your data coming in, and you won’t have to worry about resource allocation or administration.
Kinesis provides four specialized services classified by the type and stage of processing of streaming data, as described below.
Note: Originally, this product was called Kinesis Streams — now we have Kinesis Data Streams and Kinesis Video Streams.
Since Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is a fully customizable offering, it’s good to know some basics about how it’s built. It’s components are:
Kinesis Video Streams is a purpose-built video streaming analysis service that integrates with AWS Machine Learning (ML)/Artificial Intelligence (AI) offerings.
This is a managed service to help you quickly get near-real-time data streams collected and into storage for analysis.
Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics allows you to quickly create SQL code that continuously reads, processes, and stores data in near real-time.
One way to think about use cases for Kinesis is by considering what some sources of real-time streaming data are, for example:
And a next step in learning about use cases is to check out our course on Working with Amazon Kinesis Analytics. You’ll get valuable, actionable insight on the nuts and bolts of a key Kinesis service.
Amazon Kinesis acts as the front end of your streaming data and — depending on your business needs — can be as complicated and as real-time as you want. Coupled with its integration with other AWS services, Kinesis can help you process, react, and take action so that your business move swiftly on its needs.