Pegasystems now wants to be seen as an applications company, but its platform is still a big deal
In the past year Pegasystems has significantly shifted. It used to promote itself as a BPM platform provider differentiated by its rich industry frameworks, but now it’s promoting itself as a ‘strategic applications company’ differentiated by the platform (Pega 7) on which its applications are built. Nevertheless it remains a highly significant business process application platform player.
Pegasystems is looking at how it can appeal to a wider range of client needs, but the fact remains that nobody should be buying the Pega platform today solely to automate vacation approvals. Its contracts are priced accordingly, but the technology is very sophisticated in a couple of key ways. Firstly, it allows you to create sophisticated, dynamic process applications with advanced case management and analytics features; and secondly it enables you to deal with complex and demanding change requirements across large programs.
Looking at support for different kinds of work:
- There’s strong support at both design time and runtime for automated work scenarios – with good error handling and integration facilities. With its rules- and analytics-based foundation it’s also no surprise that decision automation is a very strong capability. The new Live Data capability further simplifies application integration.
- The fact that Work Objects, rather than Flows, are the central modeling concept in the Pega platform sets a foundation for very flexible transactional work support. Sophisticated organisational modeling, calendaring, document management integration via CMIS and the power of Visual Business Director are all big contributors.
- Over its past couple of releases Pega BPM has become extremely capable in support of exploratory work scenarios through explicit and sophisticated Case Management support at design time and runtime. Pega goes further than others in also providing some very useful targeted monitoring and optimisation features.
With prioritised investments over the past couple of years in extending its core capabilities with mobile and social technologies, and also the acquisition of Antenna Software in 2013, process applications built with the Pega 7 Platform can deliver significant scope and scale of engagement with stakeholders – not only in operational process work itself, but also throughout discovery, design and development projects. Responsive UI generation by default in design tools, combined with the cross-platform and multi-architecture support of Pega Mobile, means that you’ve got a lot of choice in how you want to support mobility in process work. New offline working capabilities for your Pega applications further enrich the offering.
This is an extract from a new report in our Managing and Co-ordinating Work research theme, by Research Director Neil Ward-Dutton.