# Data Sharing

Share well-governed streams of real time data between teams, lines of business or organizations in a secure, scalable way.

## Bridge Enterprises with Fresh, Well-Governed Data Streams

Businesses need seamless data exchange with partners, suppliers, and customers to gain operational efficiency and analytical insights. However, traditional data sharing methods like flat files, APIs, and proprietary platforms present scalability, security, and vendor lock-in challenges. These limitations hinder the ability to build data-driven partnerships and unlock new revenue streams.

Confluent offers versatile data sharing patterns for various scenarios, enabling the creation of data products across organizational boundaries (both internally and externally). Organizations can confidently share well-governed streams of data in a secure, scalable way, creating deeper collaborations with partners.

**Easily exchange real-time data without delays** in a few clicks from Confluent to any Kafka client with Stream Sharing.

**Protect your shared data** with robust authenticated sharing, access management, and layered encryption controls.

**Trust the quality and compatibility of shared data** by enforcing consistent schemas across users, teams, and organizations.

## Build with Confluent

This use case leverages the following building blocks in Confluent Cloud:

### [Stream Processing →](/content/product/flink/index.html)

### [Stream Governance →](/content/product/stream-governance/index.html)

### [Cluster Linking →](https://docs.confluent.io/cloud/current/multi-cloud/cluster-linking/index.html?session_ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F)

### [Stream Sharing →](https://docs.confluent.io/cloud/current/stream-sharing/overview.html?session_ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F)

## Reference Architecture

This architecture demonstrates 3 common patterns for data sharing with Confluent: Stream Sharing, Cluster Linking, and Kafka or REST API Client communication. Please note, a Gateway Cluster is not required for each pattern (*included for demonstrative purposes).

**Cluster Linking**

Enterprise-level data sharing while maintaining data sovereignty (*inter-org replication currently available from public clusters).

**Stream Sharing**

Topic-level access for simple external client integration. Read-only access for external partners.

**Kafka or REST API client communication**

Flexible integration with bidirectional communication capabilities.