Definition
This means true real time data synchronisation that is fast enough to track a button click or mouse movement.
Explanation
‘Real time’ is a very iffy phrase in the corporate world. A lot of people use it, particularly the business, but it is often not defined well enough for my fellow IT professionals, simply because of how it might actually be implemented in the underlying systems.
For example, if you are only following something that changes once a day in the real world, then real time for that system could simply mean processing the data straight after it is updated. So a once-a-day update could be considered real time, or at least as fast as people would perceive it to be.
It’s not proper IT real time, though.
So, when real time is discussed between IT teams, they often want a hard definition in SLA terms.
This is where the phrase “Netflix real time” comes in. It’s a term I’ve heard used by a vendor in general discussions.
If you want to follow a mouse movement or a click on the screen, or respond in a way where the delay is imperceptible to the user, you need it to happen in under 200 milliseconds.
That gives us a level and thus cost we target for true true real time.