As consumer expectations for faster service intensify, businesses are increasingly adopting a "shift left" strategy, leveraging streaming technologies to process data earlier in the pipeline, thus reducing storage and compute costs, latency, and operational complexity. Traditional Extract, Load, Transform (ELT) methods, which rely on batch processing, are becoming less viable due to high latency, operational challenges, and inefficiencies, especially as data volumes grow. By shifting data processing upstream using tools like Apache Flink, organizations can achieve near-instant data availability, lower costs through incremental processing, and simplified operations by eliminating complex scheduling. This evolution is enabling companies to maintain existing SQL workflows while benefiting from reduced latency and expenses, making streaming more accessible through platforms like Delta Stream. As accessible tools democratize streaming, this shift is becoming essential for maintaining competitive advantage in a world where real-time data processing is crucial.