Alight Increases Digital Delivery Pace with Confluent

Alight Solutions, a leader in technology-enabled health, wealth, and human capital management, sought to accelerate digital product delivery and reduce innovation barriers. Their strategy involved developing a low-latency, single view of the customer using the Confluent Platform, powered by Apache Kafka®. This unified data platform aimed to consolidate data from various back-end systems, including mainframe, Java applications, and cloud-based human capital management software.

Prior to the Unified Data Platform, Alight faced challenges with integrating back-end information within web portals and mobile apps. This approach led to performance bottlenecks, high costs, and slow time-to-market. Applications had to access multiple systems to retrieve necessary data, impacting system speed and development pace. Additionally, the reliance on mainframe systems for every user login resulted in significant budgetary demands.

To address these challenges, Alight implemented a forward cache to improve performance and reduce mainframe load. The team chose Confluent Platform to build scalable, secure streaming data pipelines that refresh data in near real-time. This solution required robust data protection measures, including encryption at rest and in transit, to handle approximately 70 million unique records securely.

By leveraging Confluent Platform, Alight successfully established a unified data platform that significantly improved their operations. The platform enabled faster delivery of customer-facing solutions, reduced mainframe costs, and fostered innovation. With a centralized, consistently updated view of consumer data, Alight's designers and developers can now explore new delivery channels and ideas, such as integrating data-driven responses into their chatbot platform.

Value Results:

• Reduced Mainframe Costs: By offloading work to the forward cache, Alight significantly lowered demand on their mainframe systems.

• Accelerated Solution Delivery: The platform centralizes system integrations, streamlining development and improving agility.

• Established a Scalable Platform: Alight created a platform that supports future expansion and integrates newer frameworks and engines.

• Facilitated Innovation: Consistent access to consumer data enables Alight to explore new delivery channels and ideas, such as enhancing their chatbot platform with data-driven responses.