Connectivity & Data

K3s is a CNCF-certified Kubernetes distribution packaged as a single binary under 70MB. Built by SUSE (formerly Rancher Labs), it runs on ARM64, ARMv7, and x86_64, making it ideal for edge computing, IoT gateways, and factory-floor deployments.

Zapier is a cloud-based no-code automation platform that connects over 8,000 apps via trigger-action workflows ("Zaps"), enabling non-technical users to automate data movement and business processes without writing code.

Open-source edge computing platform for connecting devices, normalizing data, and routing it to enterprise or cloud applications. EdgeX Foundry uses a modular microservices architecture with device, core, application, and security services.

Open-source hyperconverged infrastructure software for bare-metal Kubernetes and virtual machine workloads. Harvester combines virtualization, distributed storage, and infrastructure management for datacenter and edge deployments.

Open-source Kubernetes management platform for provisioning, securing, and operating multiple clusters across datacenters, clouds, and edge sites. Rancher supports Rancher-managed distributions such as RKE2 and K3s plus imported or hosted clusters including EKS, AKS, and GKE.

Open-source edge computing platform that extends upstream Kubernetes to distributed edge sites. It adds edge autonomy, cross-node-pool networking, and EdgeX Foundry integration while preserving native Kubernetes APIs.

Workato is a cloud-based enterprise integration and automation platform for connecting SaaS, on-prem, API, and AI systems through low-code workflows, event streams, and MCP servers.

Open-source Kubernetes extension for multi-site edge environments, providing edge autonomy, distributed health monitoring, and ServiceGroup workload orchestration. A CNCF sandbox project initiated by Tencent Cloud and co-launched with Intel, VMware, and Meituan.

Open-core workflow automation platform that combines a visual node editor with full JavaScript/Python code steps, built for technical teams who need self-hosted control. Supports MQTT, webhooks, REST APIs, and 1,500+ connectors including AI models and industrial data sources.

Open-source CNCF-graduated project that extends Kubernetes APIs to edge computing environments. Enables containerized application deployment and device management across cloud-edge infrastructure with ~70MB memory footprint.

Open-source communication protocol that blends pub/sub messaging with geo-distributed storage and query capabilities. Designed for edge-to-cloud scenarios with minimal wire overhead.

Open-source time-series database with built-in stream processing and AI analytics. Designed for high-cardinality industrial sensor data with edge-to-cloud deployment.

ClickHouse is an open-source column-oriented database management system designed for real-time analytics using SQL queries. Delivers high-performance query processing at petabyte scale.

Apache IoTDB is a native time-series database optimized for IoT and industrial applications. Features edge-cloud synchronization and SQL-like query interface.

Apache NiFi is an open-source visual dataflow platform for automating data movement between systems. It provides guaranteed delivery, data provenance tracking, and a browser-based drag-and-drop UI for designing processing pipelines.

Distributed MQTT message broker built on Erlang/OTP for high-performance industrial IoT applications. Features clustering, automatic network partition recovery, Lua scripting, and webhook support.

EMQX is a unified MQTT platform that connects, processes, and streams data from millions of IoT devices to cloud, AI, and analytics systems. It supports 100M+ concurrent connections per cluster with sub-millisecond latency.

Java-based MQTT broker that fully supports MQTT 3.x and MQTT 5. The Community Edition is open-source under Apache 2.0, while Enterprise adds clustering, monitoring, and professional support.

Plugin-driven agent written in Go for collecting, processing, and writing metrics, logs, and sensor data. Part of the InfluxData stack with 300+ input plugins covering system metrics, databases, IoT protocols, and cloud services.

Open-source time-series database optimized for high-throughput ingestion and fast SQL analytics. Compatible with InfluxDB line protocol, PostgreSQL wire protocol, and integrates with Grafana.

Open-source PostgreSQL extension that transforms Postgres into a time-series database. Features automatic partitioning via hypertables, continuous aggregates, and hybrid row-columnar storage with up to 95% compression.

Strimzi is a CNCF Incubating project that provides Kubernetes operators for deploying and managing Apache Kafka clusters. It simplifies Kafka operations through Custom Resources, automated TLS encryption, and integrations with Kafka Connect, MirrorMaker 2.0, and Cruise Control.

RabbitMQ is an enterprise-grade open-source message broker built on Erlang/OTP. It supports AMQP, MQTT 5.0, STOMP, and streaming via a plugin architecture.

Confluent Platform is the enterprise distribution of Apache Kafka, adding ksqlDB for SQL stream processing, Schema Registry for data governance, 120+ Kafka Connect connectors, and enterprise security features including RBAC and audit logging.

Apache Flink processes event streams with built-in state management, checkpointing, and unified batch/stream APIs. Used by Alibaba, Uber, and Netflix for real-time analytics at scale.

NATS is a high-performance messaging system for distributed architectures, supporting pub/sub, request-reply, and queue groups. JetStream adds optional persistence with at-least-once delivery guarantees.

Redis is an open-source, in-memory data structure store used as a database, cache, message broker, and streaming engine. Redis Streams provides a log data structure for event sourcing and real-time data pipelines.

Apache Pulsar is an open-source, cloud-native distributed messaging and streaming platform that combines pub/sub messaging and event streaming in a unified architecture. Its tiered storage and native multi-tenancy enable indefinite message retention and strong isolation for large-scale deployments.

Eclipse Kapua is a modular, open-source IoT platform designed for enterprise device management and data ingestion. Built on Java, it provides a scalable backend for managing IoT gateways and smart edge devices, with robust support for MQTT and other industrial protocols.

Open-source IoT edge framework built on Java/OSGi for developing and managing gateway applications. Includes Kura Wires for visual data flow design and supports MQTT, Modbus, and OPC-UA.

Open-source IoT connectivity framework from the Eclipse Foundation. Provides uniform service interfaces for connecting large numbers of devices regardless of whether they speak MQTT, AMQP, CoAP, or HTTP.

Apache Kafka is an open-source distributed event streaming platform for high-performance data pipelines, streaming analytics, and mission-critical applications. Handles trillions of events per day with durable, fault-tolerant storage.

Browser-based visual programming tool for wiring together devices, APIs, and services with a drag-and-drop flow editor. Built on Node.js, runs on anything from a Raspberry Pi to cloud servers.

United Manufacturing Hub is an open-source industrial data management platform that builds a Unified Namespace by integrating shop-floor connectivity, message brokerage, and time-series storage into a single Kubernetes-native deployment.

Purpose-built time-series database optimized for high-speed ingestion and querying of timestamped data. InfluxDB 3, rewritten in Rust on Apache Arrow and Parquet, supports SQL and InfluxQL natively with unlimited cardinality.