Navy Mutual, a federally tax-exempt, mutual-benefit Veterans Service Organization committed to safeguarding the military and uniformed service community’s financial future, needed help becoming a more data-driven organization through cloud modernization.
Challenge
- Centralize and Cleanse Disparate Data Sources
- Build Infrastructure for an Analytics Ecosystem
- Streamline Path to Key Insights
- Shift to a Data-Driven Mindset
Challenge
Navy Mutual needed help designing, building, and supporting a secure, scalable, and cost-effective data lakehouse in AWS to centralize disparate data sources for analytical purposes. The client contracted Infinitive to:- Centralize and Cleanse Disparate Data Sources
- Build Infrastructure for an Analytics Ecosystem
- Streamline Path to Key Insights
- Shift to a Data-Driven Mindset
Solution
The Infinitive team conducted an initial assessment of Navy Mutual’s on-premises applications, environments, and permissions. We then used AWS Control Tower to establish five AWS accounts:
- AWS Sandbox Account
Permissions:
- Developers are provided Admin access to build and test solutions
- AWS Production Account
Permissions:
- Currently only 2 Navy Mutual staff have admin rights
- Services are created only with CloudFormation (i.e., no manual creation)
- AWS Audit Account
- Auditing and compliance
- AWS Logging Account
- Consolidation of logging from all accounts
- AWS Master Account
- Consolidated billing
The architecture implemented in support of Navy Mutual’s data warehousing needs was based on three primary user groups that the solution needed to serve: internal Navy Mutual staff, the general public (such as university administrators and high school counselors), and highly skilled researchers.
After approximately four weeks of detailed discovery sessions with different personas in the user groups, Infinitive proposed a three-zone architecture that effectively leveraged the AWS infrastructure Navy Mutual had in place. This approach had
The lakehouse architecture was broken into three core data layers:
- Bronze — Ingestion: Capture data in its original form regardless of source, as well as Change Data Capture (CDC) from the transactional system where applicable.
- Silver — Enrichment: Cleanse data, calculate stored values, application of business/data quality rules, masking of sensitive data.
- Gold — Consumption: Curate data models to support more seamless access to data and support the implementation of specific use cases across LOBs
Infinitive proved the ingestion of transactional data that is refreshed daily using a combination of DMS, DynamoDB, and Glue as the primary services.
Solution
The Infinitive team conducted an initial assessment of Navy Mutual’s on-premises applications, environments, and permissions. We then used AWS Control Tower to establish five AWS accounts:
- AWS Sandbox Account
Permissions:
- Developers are provided Admin access to build and test solutions
- AWS Production Account
Permissions:
- Currently only 2 Navy Mutual staff have admin rights
- Services are created only with CloudFormation (i.e., no manual creation)
- AWS Audit Account
- Auditing and compliance
- AWS Logging Account
- Consolidation of logging from all accounts
- AWS Master Account
- Consolidated billing
The architecture implemented in support of Navy Mutual’s data warehousing needs was based on three primary user groups that the solution needed to serve: internal Navy Mutual staff, the general public (such as university administrators and high school counselors), and highly skilled researchers.
After approximately four weeks of detailed discovery sessions with different personas in the user groups, Infinitive proposed a three-zone architecture that effectively leveraged the AWS infrastructure Navy Mutual had in place. This approach had
The lakehouse architecture was broken into three core data layers:
- Bronze — Ingestion: Capture data in its original form regardless of source, as well as Change Data Capture (CDC) from the transactional system where applicable.
- Silver — Enrichment: Cleanse data, calculate stored values, application of business/data quality rules, masking of sensitive data.
- Gold — Consumption: Curate data models to support more seamless access to data and support the implementation of specific use cases across LOBs
Infinitive proved the ingestion of transactional data that is refreshed daily using a combination of DMS, DynamoDB, and Glue as the primary services.
Outcome
Infinitive built a cost-effective, secure, scalable, and extensible solution that centralized Navy Mutual’s key data sources (ALIP and membership), automated data pipelines to ingest updates with near real-time capabilities, scaled data to allow for ingestion of new data sets, and worked with their data governance expert to understand where those activities fit into the flow.
As a result of the project, Navy Mutual personnel have been able to transition their data analytic needs from the Salesforce platform to the lakehouse to discover key insights and has been recognized by other LOBs generating requests to build similar solutions for their teams. Moreover, the leader of the program management office was very supportive of consolidating data from many applications into an easy to access lakehouse.
Outcome
Infinitive built a cost-effective, secure, scalable, and extensible solution that centralized Navy Mutual’s key data sources (ALIP and membership), automated data pipelines to ingest updates with near real-time capabilities, scaled data to allow for ingestion of new data sets, and worked with their data governance expert to understand where those activities fit into the flow.
As a result of the project, Navy Mutual personnel have been able to transition their data analytic needs from the Salesforce platform to the lakehouse to discover key insights and has been recognized by other LOBs generating requests to build similar solutions for their teams. Moreover, the leader of the program management office was very supportive of consolidating data from many applications into an easy to access lakehouse.
