"We need real-time analytics" is one of the most common requests in data engineering. It's also one of the most misunderstood. When the VP of Sales says "real-time," they usually mean "faster than the dashboard that refreshes overnight." When the CTO says it, they might mean sub-second event streaming. The gap between those two definitions is a 6-month infrastructure project.
Most teams don't need true real-time. They need fast enough. And "fast enough" is achievable with pre-aggregation caching at a fraction of the complexity and cost of a streaming architecture.
What is real-time analytics?
Real-time analytics means querying data with minimal latency between when an event happens and when it's visible in your analytics. The spectrum:
Freshness
