Future-proofing real-time applications requires careful consideration of various factors, including data growth, performance demands, data diversity, changing schema, high availability, cloud vendor lock-in, interoperability, and cost efficiency. Developers should select databases that can handle these challenges effectively while remaining adaptable to evolving needs and scalable without significant rework. Solutions like Aerospike aim to address these issues by providing features such as scalability, high performance, flexibility, and compatibility with modern application development requirements.