Announcing Ursa Engine GA: Lakehouse-Native Kafka Streaming with Unity & Iceberg REST Catalog Integration

We’re excited to announce a major milestone in the evolution of cloud-native data streaming: Ursa Engine is now Generally Available on StreamNative BYOC for AWS! Built to fulfill the promise of the Streaming Augmented Lakehouse, Ursa Engine is the first and only Kafka-compatible data streaming engine purpose-built for cloud-native environments and lakehouses. It streamlines data ingestion into your lakehouse and augments it with real-time streaming capabilities.

In tandem with our GA release, we’re proud to share that Ursa Engine now integrates seamlessly with Unity Catalog and Iceberg REST Catalog, enabling instant streaming data discovery and truly uniform governance—from data streaming to data analytics.

The Streaming Augmented Lakehouse: Why It Matters

Traditional data ecosystems often require separate infrastructures for real-time data streaming (e.g., Kafka or Pulsar) and batch processing via data lakehouses (e.g., Delta Lake, Iceberg). This split environment not only complicates governance, schema management, and data discovery—it also introduces expensive infrastructure costs resulting from repeated data transfers and storage, complex ETL processes, and error-prone, duplicated schema mapping. Specifically, organizations face:

• Costly Data Transfers: Frequent cross-system data movement drives up infrastructure expenses.
• Fragmented Governance: Duplicating access policies, security settings, and lineage tracking across multiple platforms leads to inconsistencies.
• Operational Complexity: Running two or more separate systems for data streaming and lakehouses is labor-intensive.
• Data Silos: Maintaining consistent data sets across streaming, warehouse, and lakehouse environments is resource-heavy and prone to errors.

Ursa Engine solves these challenges by augmenting the lakehouse with Kafka-compatible data streaming capabilities, leveraging open storage formats like Delta Lake and Iceberg, and unifying governance through catalog integrations.

‍General Availability on StreamNative BYOC for AWS

Ursa Engine is now officially GA on StreamNative BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud) for AWS, giving organizations the freedom to deploy Ursa in their preferred cloud environment—while also offering a fully integrated approach to streaming data into lakehouses. Key benefits include:

1. 10x Infrastructure Cost Reduction
   Achieve dramatic savings with a leaderless architecture that eliminates inter-AZ traffic and open-format lakehouse storage that significantly lowers costs. Read our cost benchmark report to see how Ursa sustains a 5GB/s Kafka workload at just 5% of the cost of traditional streaming engines like Kafka and Redpanda.
2. Kafka Protocol Compatibility
   Retain your existing Kafka clients and applications without rewriting code.
3. Latency-Relaxed Workloads
   Strike the ideal balance between throughput, performance, and cost-effectiveness.
4. Instant Lakehouse Availability
   Make data instantly accessible in open-standard formats (e.g., Iceberg, Delta) by leveraging native lakehouse integration, removing extra ETL processes and data movement.
5. Unified Governance
   Ensure consistent data policies, security, and seamless discovery through Data Catalog —unifying data access across both real-time and batch domains.
6. Usage-Based Pricing
   Leverage Elastic Throughput Units (ETUs) to pay only for throughput, significantly reducing total cost of ownership compared to traditional streaming platforms.

By adopting Ursa Engine on StreamNative BYOC, customers can consolidate their data infrastructure—reducing both costs and complexity—while unifying streaming and batch processing into one cohesive ecosystem.

‍Reduce Infrastructure Costs by 10x with Leaderless Architecture and Open Lakehouse Storage

‍A key differentiator of Ursa Engine is its leaderless architecture, which leverages the lakehouse as shared storage and Oxia as a scalable index/metadata manager. This approach eliminates expensive inter-AZ traffic and significantly reduces inter-AZ data replication overhead. In a recent benchmark, Ursa consistently handled 5GB/s of Kafka workload for just $54 per hour—94% cheaper than vanilla Kafka and RedPanda.

In addition, Ursa Engine is the first and ONLY data streaming solution that natively implements its storage engine using open lakehouse formats, supporting both Iceberg and DeltaLake. By embedding data schemas directly into the storage layer, Ursa takes advantage of columnar compression, enabling potential more than 10x storage reduction.

Unlike other “Iceberg integrations” (e.g., RedPanda Iceberg topics), where two copies of data are maintained—one in proprietary storage and another in the lakehouse—Ursa stores data just once, cutting complexity and eliminating inconsistencies.

By embracing open lakehouse formats and avoiding leader-based interzone data replication, Ursa delivers up to a 10x reduction in infrastructure costs compared to traditional streaming solutions.

Interested in how we achieved these savings? Check out our blog post on ”Why Leaderless Architecture and Lakehouse-Native Storage for Reducing Kafka Cost”.

‍Unified Governance with Unity Catalog & Iceberg REST Catalog

‍Ursa Engine seamlessly integrates with Iceberg and Delta Lake, supporting two table modes for real-time and batch analytics:

‍1. Stream Backed by Table (Ursa Managed Table)Ursa persistently stores streaming data in an append-only lakehouse table, ensuring a single data copy while preserving offsets and ordering.

• Enables full stream replay and real-time queries.
• Ursa manages data lifecycle and retention.
• Tables auto-register in Unity or Iceberg Catalog for governance.

✅ Best for: Bronze tables—historical data retention, auditing, and replayability.

‍2. Stream Delivered to Table (Ursa External Table)Ursa publishes data to external Iceberg tables via append or upsert, without managing their lifecycle.

• Two data copies: row-based for streaming, columnar for analytics.
• Ideal for compacted storage with flexible partitioning.
• Lifecycle managed by external data catalog services.

✅ Best for: Silver & Gold tables—curated, transformed, and optimized for analytics.

Ursa’s Unity/Iceberg Catalog integration ensures:

• Centralized Policies: Unified access control & lineage tracking.
• Schema Discovery: Single metadata layer across streaming & batch.
• Data Discoverability: Query real-time & batch data without duplication.
• Efficiency: Simplified architecture, reduced complexity, and better scalability.

You can dive deeper into our Lakehouse-native storage blog post to learn how we leverage Iceberg or Delta Lake as storage formats. Additionally, check out our announcement blog post on how Ursa Engine integrates with Unity Catalog for ingesting data into Databricks.

‍ETU Pricing Model: Pay for Throughput, Not Storage

‍Lastly, while traditional streaming platforms often bundle storage and throughput costs, Ursa Engine introduces Elastic Throughput Units (ETUs)—a usage-based pricing model that charges only for throughput, with no storage fees.

• Transparent & Predictable: Scale your workload as needed without hidden storage charges.
• 50% Lower Cost than Confluent WarpStream: Lower your total cost of ownership (TCO) while maintaining robust performance and reliability. Check out the pricing difference in this blog post.

Getting Started with Ursa Engine

‍Ready to take your data architecture into the era of real-time AI? Here’s how you can get started:

🚀 [Sign Up for Ursa Engine on StreamNative BYOC]
Deploy in your preferred cloud environment, configure latency-relaxed Kafka workloads, and streamline data ingestion into your lakehouse.

📖 [Explore Our Documentation]
Learn how to configure Ursa Engine with Unity or Iceberg Catalog to maintain a single governance model from ingestion to analytics.

📞 [Contact Us for a Demo]
See how Ursa Engine optimizes Kafka workloads and simplifies lakehouse integration—reducing complexity and operational overhead.

🎥 [Watch our on-demand workshop]
Augment Your Lakehouse with Streaming Capabilities for Real-Time AI to get an end-to-end overview of StreamNative’s integration with Databricks Unity Catalog.

📅 [Sign up for our upcoming webinar]
Join StreamNative & Databricks as we dive deeper into Ursa Engine and Unity Catalog integration.

Thank you for joining us on this journey to redefine real-time data streaming standards. With the General Availability of Ursa Engine on BYOC for AWS, complete with Unity Catalog and Iceberg REST Catalog integration, you can unify governance, cut costs, and streamline your data ingestion—all in one place.

We look forward to seeing the innovative applications and solutions you’ll build with Ursa Engine!