Kudu is an open source storage layer developed by Cloudera that provides low latency queries on large datasets. It uses a columnar storage format for fast scans and an embedded B-tree index for fast random access. Kudu tables are partitioned into tablets that are distributed and replicated across a cluster. The Raft consensus algorithm ensures consistency during replication. Kudu is suitable for applications requiring real-time analytics on streaming data and time-series queries across large datasets.