Provides kafka connect features over HTTP/S, can work with any kafka ReST proxy, tested with confluent's ReST Proxy
https://kafka.apache.org/documentation/#connect provides framework to publish and consume data from kafka topic, it has pluggable
source and sink connectors to variety of data sources
Kafka connect is powerfull framework but tied to kafka and requires kafka cluster access
Scenario, in which we need kafka connect functionality but do not want to expose kafka cluster to internet, then its a challenge.
With HTTP/S we communicate with kafka-ReST Proxy, which in turn runs kafka producers & consumers
From remote client perspective http is proven and simple way to transfer data through robust faremwork like kafka-connect
This compoenent provides at least once data publish gurantee.