Re:Ask HN: Why should one ever use AWS Kinesis when Kafka is...
by anilgulecha on Thursday December 29, 2016 @08:50AM
(#13277215)
Hosted Kafka by a third party is not equivalent to (potential) Hosted Kafka by AWS.
There's a lot of signalling/data at the back when AWS implements it, which you will never have access to.
I think Kinesis is an excellent service, but if you have an existing stack or preference on OpenSource solutions, it's good to have choice.