OVO Energy is a leading independent energy company in the UK with a focus on using technology to enhance its customer experience. One tool they use is the smart meter, with over 1 million already installed. The smart meter data is used for a variety of insight, analytics, and experience elements, including a disaggregation process that determines the energy usage of different appliances in customers’ homes. These smart meters require a robust and reliable data architecture that is also able to scale rapidly, which is why they decided to place Apache Kafka at the heart of it: this is where their relationship with Aiven started. But, their needs didn’t stop with Apache Kafka. They needed a bespoke managed package that includes including Elasticsearch, InfluxDB, and Grafana to allow them to focus on their core business instead of managing software infrastructure.