Apache Kafka is an open-source stream-processing software platform developed by LinkedIn, which is used for building real-time data pipelines and streaming apps. Coursera's Apache Kafka catalogue teaches you how to handle real-time data feeds with increased throughput, reliability and replication. You will learn how to set up Kafka clusters, publish and consume streams of records, and also how to process these streams to transform the data. This skill is essential for data engineers, data scientists, and software developers, providing them with the knowledge to design and manage large-scale, data-intensive applications.