Stream processing analyzes data in motion before it is stored, allowing for real-time analytics with low latency. Kafka is well-suited for stream processing due to its speed, scalability, durability, and ability to act as a universal hub. Real-time analytics can handle many use cases like customer intelligence, IoT, and security. Examples include a telco using stream processing for real-time advertising and Thompson Reuters using it for news ingestion and analytics. Stream processing can analyze data from the edge to the center in real-time to detect and predict insights and enable immediate actions.