Real-time experiences are increasingly becoming a cornerstone of modern digital interactions, spanning industries and use cases—from tracking parcels and online gaming to querying inventory and managing business-critical infrastructure. While consumers and businesses expect seamless, real-time functionality, delivering these experiences is inherently complex. It requires the near-instantaneous transfer of massive amounts of data across locations, in the correct order, and with extreme reliability.

Developers are currently forced to piece together open-source solutions that often fail to scale, leading to operational inefficiencies, customer frustration, and lost revenue. The managed real-time infrastructure market, estimated by Gartner to exceed $2.5 billion, is projected to triple in size over the next three years. Key drivers include the ongoing shift to cloud infrastructure, the rise of distributed devices, and the increasing need for interoperable tech stacks within organizations.

Use cases for managed real-time platforms are diverse and growing rapidly, including enterprise messaging, application messaging, edge data, and data streaming. Notably, edge data—though it currently represents just 5-10% of the market—accounts for approximately 30% of Forrester analyst inquiries, reflecting a strong forward-looking interest.

Market landscape

The managed real-time infrastructure market is still nascent, with significant confusion about categories and solutions. For example, analysts and customers often conflate managed Pub/Sub platforms like Ably with other data streaming technologies such as Kafka and Confluent.

Emerging subcategories include:

1. Enterprise Messaging: Focused on connecting enterprise applications for internal and external communication.
2. Application Messaging: Enabling real-time interactions within specific software applications.
3. Edge Data Streaming: Supporting connected devices with low-latency data transfer across distributed systems.
4. Data Streaming: Handling large-scale, high-frequency data transfer for analytics or decision-making.

Edge data is a particularly dynamic segment, as enterprises increasingly plan for IoT and connected device implementations. However, the lack of standardization and awareness around managed Pub/Sub platforms poses both a challenge and an opportunity.

Challenges for Startups in the Space:

1. Category Awareness: Many potential customers are unfamiliar with managed Pub/Sub platforms or misunderstand their value relative to alternatives like Kafka.
2. Tactical Entry Points: Adoption often begins with isolated, tactical use cases. Expanding across an enterprise requires addressing decentralized tech decision-making and fostering internal advocacy.
3. Developer-Centricity: Winning developer trust hinges on offering a high level of abstraction, robust quality of service (QoS), seamless onboarding, and excellent documentation—areas where many solutions fall short.

Because of the opportunity in the space, we at Dawn are proud to have invested in Ably, who are a market leader due to their scalable solution that delivers a high amount of abstraction to developers.