How would you design a globally consistent inventory system without sacrificing availability?

You design it using bounded consistency, regional ownership, and event-driven synchronization with conflict resolution.

A global inventory system must balance CAP trade-offs. A common approach is regionally partitioned ownership (each region owns a subset of inventory). Updates are processed locally and propagated asynchronously via event streaming (Kafka). Conflict resolution strategies include versioning (vector clocks), last-write-wins, or reservation-based locking for critical SKUs. Strong consistency is applied only where necessary (high-value items), while others remain eventually consistent.