Pick one: Customer data security, or real-time speed? It’s a trick question, of course. Customer data can not be compromised. But, fast access to data insights is equally critical to be competitive in the new digital economy.

Researching solutions that strike that perfect balance might seem a lengthy task. That is, unless you were at Amazon Web Services Inc.’s re:Invent. It seems the company’s customers are eager to share how they are using AWS products in use cases that don’t require trade-offs.

“The technology immediately made sense,” said Rafael Mejia (pictured, right), director of analytics and data management at AAA Life Insurance Co. “It became a lot more about are we solving the right business problems and less about do we have the right technologies.”

Mejia and Ankur Jain (pictured, left), senior vice president of cloud solutions at Merkle Inc., spoke with Lisa Martin (@LisaMartinTV) and John Furrier (@furrier), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the AWS re:Invent event in Las Vegas. They discussed how global performance marketing agency Merkle has helped AAA Life Insurance transform its data management processes using AWS solutions. (* Disclosure below.)

The proof is in the customer experience

Data security is always a top priority for companies such as AAA Life that hold tens of thousands of personal data records.

“We make no compromises when it comes to safety of our members data, and we take every step possible to ensure that it is managed in a responsible and safe way,” Mejia said.

But, the 50-year-old company had big challenges on its existing platform, with some processes taking weeks. “[It] just didn’t allow us to provide the member experience that we wanted,” he said.

So, AAA Life turned to Merkle to help update its technology. Faced with updating a platform where data was only refreshed every two weeks, Jain turned to Amazon’s new cloud-native architecture. “We leveraged AWS Redshift as the database platform to integrate basically billions and billions of rows from hundred plus sources that we are bringing in on a daily basis,” he said.

While Redshift is the centerpiece, the system also incorporates the third-party cloud-native Matillion extract, load, and transform tool. The transformed system allows Merkle to catch real-time interactions of users on the website. AAA Life can then make real-time decisions on how to personalize the data experience for its customers.

AAA Life is now embracing machine learning and artificial intelligence, and Mejia is looking forward to incorporating some of the AWS tools announced at re:Invent into AAA Life’s company’s workflows.

“I wanted [AWS] to make a greater investment in that end user data scientist experience in auto-ML, and they knocked it out of the park,” he said, referring to the announcement of the autoML for SageMaker. “I can’t wait to go play today.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS re:Invent event. (* Disclosure: Amazon Web Services Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither AWS nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE