Would be helpful if you shared what your reads are like. Are they limited to a single customer or span the whole db? How fast do you need the "read-side" [or some portion of it] to be aware of the new writes? Also remember that there's nothing stopping you from using multiple databases. I.e. if you run complex analytically queries that are just impossible to execute even in soft real time it's very reasonable to have a separate database for that does that very well.