Apache Kafka is a distributed event streaming platform used for building real-time data pipelines and streaming applications. It is highly scalable, fault-tolerant, and designed for handling large volumes of data with low latency. Kafka enables businesses to process and analyze data in real-time, making it ideal for use cases such as logging, monitoring, and messaging. CMAK (formerly Kafka Manager) is a web-based tool used to manage and monitor Kafka clusters. It provides an intuitive interface to handle cluster configurations, monitor performance, and manage topics and partitions. With CMAK, users can efficiently oversee Kafka clusters for better reliability and scalability.