ActiveMQ has been around for a long time (along with JMS), with pub/sub, broadcast, queues, transactions, etc. So can anyone tell me why things like Kafka have

ActiveMQ has been around for a long time (along with JMS), with pub/sub, broadcast, queues, transactions, etc. So can anyone tell me why things like Kafka have seen such interest in the last few years? Is it just another example of an improvement to a long existing solution - the advantage being that Kafka easily scales horizontally? Obviously, great for the minority of projects that actually need it, but just another example of a fad for the 90% who would be just fine using the tried and true, but unhip solution.