diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 9fdfbc32d11d8..b2bfd9a79cab4 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -74,6 +74,7 @@ be deprecated eventually.
 - [#2038](https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/issues/2038): Add papertrail support to webhooks
 - [#2253](https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/pull/2253): Change jolokia plugin to use bulk requests.
 - [#2575](https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/issues/2575) Add diskio input for Darwin
+- [#2705](https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/pull/2705): Kinesis output: add use_random_partitionkey option
 - [#2635](https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/issues/2635): add tcp keep-alive to socket_listener & socket_writer
 
 ### Bugfixes
diff --git a/Godeps b/Godeps
index 9ffd7e1b82659..aa9ace1ab1f3c 100644
--- a/Godeps
+++ b/Godeps
@@ -45,6 +45,7 @@ github.com/prometheus/common dd2f054febf4a6c00f2343686efb775948a8bff4
 github.com/prometheus/procfs 1878d9fbb537119d24b21ca07effd591627cd160
 github.com/rcrowley/go-metrics 1f30fe9094a513ce4c700b9a54458bbb0c96996c
 github.com/samuel/go-zookeeper 1d7be4effb13d2d908342d349d71a284a7542693
+github.com/satori/go.uuid 5bf94b69c6b68ee1b541973bb8e1144db23a194b
 github.com/shirou/gopsutil 70693b6a3da51a8a686d31f1b346077bbc066062
 github.com/soniah/gosnmp 5ad50dc75ab389f8a1c9f8a67d3a1cd85f67ed15
 github.com/streadway/amqp 63795daa9a446c920826655f26ba31c81c860fd6
diff --git a/plugins/outputs/kinesis/README.md b/plugins/outputs/kinesis/README.md
index 115d1435559f4..52b80208a2d22 100644
--- a/plugins/outputs/kinesis/README.md
+++ b/plugins/outputs/kinesis/README.md
@@ -50,6 +50,11 @@ This is used to group data within a stream. Currently this plugin only supports
 Manually configuring different hosts, or groups of hosts with manually selected partitionkeys might be a workable
 solution to scale out.
 
+### use_random_partitionkey
+
+When true a random UUID will be generated and used as the partitionkey when sending data to Kinesis. This allows data to evenly spread across multiple shards in the stream. Due to using a random paritionKey there can be no guarantee of ordering when consuming the data off the shards.
+If true then the partitionkey option will be ignored.
+
 ### format
 
 The format configuration value has been designated to allow people to change the format of the Point as written to
diff --git a/plugins/outputs/kinesis/kinesis.go b/plugins/outputs/kinesis/kinesis.go
index 8cbdea68292e9..d69ae3954e530 100644
--- a/plugins/outputs/kinesis/kinesis.go
+++ b/plugins/outputs/kinesis/kinesis.go
@@ -7,6 +7,7 @@ import (
 
 	"github.com/aws/aws-sdk-go/aws"
 	"github.com/aws/aws-sdk-go/service/kinesis"
+	"github.com/satori/go.uuid"
 
 	"github.com/influxdata/telegraf"
 	internalaws "github.com/influxdata/telegraf/internal/config/aws"
@@ -23,10 +24,11 @@ type KinesisOutput struct {
 	Filename  string `toml:"shared_credential_file"`
 	Token     string `toml:"token"`
 
-	StreamName   string `toml:"streamname"`
-	PartitionKey string `toml:"partitionkey"`
-	Debug        bool   `toml:"debug"`
-	svc          *kinesis.Kinesis
+	StreamName         string `toml:"streamname"`
+	PartitionKey       string `toml:"partitionkey"`
+	RandomPartitionKey bool   `toml:"use_random_partitionkey"`
+	Debug              bool   `toml:"debug"`
+	svc                *kinesis.Kinesis
 
 	serializer serializers.Serializer
 }
@@ -54,6 +56,11 @@ var sampleConfig = `
   streamname = "StreamName"
   ## PartitionKey as used for sharding data.
   partitionkey = "PartitionKey"
+  ## If set the paritionKey will be a random UUID on every put.
+  ## This allows for scaling across multiple shards in a stream.
+  ## This will cause issues with ordering.
+  use_random_partitionkey = false
+
 
   ## Data format to output.
   ## Each data format has it's own unique set of configuration options, read
@@ -173,9 +180,15 @@ func (k *KinesisOutput) Write(metrics []telegraf.Metric) error {
 			return err
 		}
 
+		partitionKey := k.PartitionKey
+		if k.RandomPartitionKey {
+			u := uuid.NewV4()
+			partitionKey = u.String()
+		}
+
 		d := kinesis.PutRecordsRequestEntry{
 			Data:         values,
-			PartitionKey: aws.String(k.PartitionKey),
+			PartitionKey: aws.String(partitionKey),
 		}
 
 		r = append(r, &d)