StreamNative Ursa Is Now Available for Public Preview on Microsoft Azure

StreamNative Launches Ursa Public Preview on Microsoft Azure

We’re thrilled to announce the Public Preview of Ursa on Microsoft Azure, bringing our leaderless, lakehouse-native data streaming engine to the Azure ecosystem. Building on our momentum from AWS and GCP, this milestone makes it easier than ever for organizations to adopt a cost-efficient, cloud-native alternative to legacy streaming platforms on Azure.

Recap: Ursa’s Breakthroughs in Streaming Architecture

Ursa is a next-generation streaming engine designed for the cloud and the lakehouse era. Since launching Ursa on AWS and GCP, organizations have used it to transform their streaming stack—simplifying operations, cutting costs, and modernizing analytics. Key highlights include:

• Leaderless Architecture: Ursa eliminates the operational burden of leader elections and cross-zone replication. Its stateless brokers and distributed consensus model remove single points of failure, reducing both downtime and complexity.
  
• Lakehouse-Native Design: Ursa uniquely supports open formats like Apache Iceberg and Delta Lake as its native storage layer—embedding schema, snapshots, and compaction directly in object storage. The result? Seamless data interoperability and 10x or greater storage savings.
  
• Kafka-Compatible Ingestion: Maintain your existing Kafka APIs while replacing underlying Kafka infrastructure with Ursa’s more efficient engine—no code changes required.
  

These innovations have delivered strong results for customers on AWS and GCP. Now, we’re bringing the same capabilities to Azure.

Introducing Ursa on Azure Public Preview

Why Azure?

Many enterprises rely on Microsoft Azure as a core part of their cloud strategy—and asked for a way to run Ursa natively on Azure infrastructure. With this Public Preview, customers can now:

• Provision Ursa in Azure: Deploy Ursa clusters directly into your own Azure subscription, with full control over compute, networking, and storage.
  
• Launch via Azure Marketplace: Simplify procurement and compliance with one-click deployment through the Azure Marketplace.
  
• Integrate with Databricks & Snowflake on Azure: Stream data directly into Delta Lake or Apache Iceberg tables governed by Databricks Unity Catalog or Snowflake Open Catalog, all natively hosted on Azure.
  
• Migrate from Kafka with Universal Linking: Seamlessly shift workloads from Apache Kafka or compatible services (like Confluent Cloud or MSK) using StreamNative’s Universal Linking, now fully available on Azure.
  

What’s in This Public Preview

✅ Ursa on Azure BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud)

Deploy Ursa clusters into your own Azure subscription while preserving internal compliance, security, and budget controls. Ursa’s stateless broker model pairs naturally with Azure services like Azure Blob Storage and Azure Virtual Network (VNet) peering.

✅ Azure Marketplace Integration

Ursa is now available in the Azure Marketplace, making it easy to launch and manage your streaming environment through your existing Azure billing and subscription agreements.

✅ Lakehouse Integrations on Azure

With native support for Delta Lake (via Unity Catalog) and Apache Iceberg (via Snowflake or open catalogs), Ursa gives you a direct pipeline from real-time topics to structured lakehouse tables—ideal for data analytics, AI, and ML workloads on Azure.

✅ Kafka Workload Migration via Universal Linking

Universal Linking is now supported on Azure, allowing for zero-downtime migration from existing Kafka clusters. Whether you're consolidating on Azure or embracing multi-cloud, you can incrementally migrate producers and consumers with no service disruption.

Getting Started

Interested in trying Ursa on Azure? Here's how to begin:

1. Sign Up for a Free Trial: Start your journey with StreamNative Cloud at streamnative.io.
   
2. Deploy Ursa via Azure Marketplace: Launch your BYOC Ursa cluster directly from the Azure Marketplace and link it to your Azure subscription.
   
3. Integrate with Databricks or Snowflake: Set up Ursa to stream directly into Unity Catalog or Open Catalog on Azure for lakehouse-native analytics.
   
4. Migrate with Universal Linking: Follow our Kafka Migration Guide to incrementally offload workloads to Ursa, with full offset preservation and schema compatibility.
   

We’re excited to see how Azure customers harness Ursa to modernize their streaming stack, power real-time analytics, and drive innovation across industries.