IBM Event Streams, which is built on Apache Kafka, is the component specifically designed for building event-driven applications. It enables the creation of intelligent and responsive applications that can react to streams of data in real time. Event Streams provides a scalable, high-throughput, and fault-tolerant event bus, which is fundamental for architectures that need to process and respond to events as they occur, rather than processing data in batches.

A. API Management: This component (IBM API Connect) focuses on creating, managing, securing, and socializing APIs. It is about exposing and controlling access to services, not processing real-time event streams.

B. Message Broker: This component (IBM MQ) provides reliable, asynchronous messaging and queuing to decouple applications. While used in event-driven patterns, its primary focus is guaranteed delivery, not high-throughput real-time stream processing.

D. DataPower Gateway: This is a security and integration gateway. Its main purpose is to secure, control, integrate, and optimize access to a range of workloads, not to build event-reactive applications.

1. IBM Cloud Pak for Integration Documentation. Capabilities > Event-driven architecture. "IBM Event Streams helps you build intelligent and responsive applications that can react to events as they happen. Based on the open-source Apache Kafka project

IBM Event Streams is an event-streaming platform that helps you build a central nervous system for your business."

2. IBM Cloud Pak for Integration Documentation. Overview > What is IBM Cloud Pak for Integration? This section outlines the core capabilities

clearly distinguishing between "Event-driven architecture" (Event Streams)

"API lifecycle" (API Management)

"Application messaging" (MQ)

and "Integration security" (DataPower Gateway)

reinforcing their distinct roles.

3. IBM Event Streams Documentation. Product overview. "IBM Event Streams is a high-throughput

fault-tolerant

event-streaming platform. It is based on the open-source Apache Kafka® project. It allows you to build event-driven applications that can react to events in real time."