We get it. You desperately need an alternative to Pega. First – an obituary 🙂

It is with a heavy heart and a hint of smirking nostalgia that we bid farewell to our once-beloved legacy BPM software program, Pega. The floppy disk that used to install it is unfortunately – lost. The once-revolutionary platform has sadly succumbed to the fast-paced rigors of technological evolution at the ripe old age of 36. Plagued by the afflictions of cost, complexity, and age, Pega finally met its end in the merciless world of software Darwinism.

Born in 1983, Pega was a brainchild of the visionary Alan Trefler. Like disco music, roller skates, and shoulder pads, Pega was the epitome of cutting-edge innovation for a time when computer processing was as slow as getting an actual letter in the mailbox. It spread its wings as one of the pioneers of business process management and customer relationship management software, dazzling the world with its functionality, colors, and charmingly limited graphics.

Pega, in its prime, was known for helping businesses automate tasks, streamline processes, and improve communication. It was a beacon of hope and a guiding star for organizations that yearned for efficiency amidst the chaos of early digital transformation. Yet, as the years went on, Pega’s once-golden reputation began to tarnish.

In its youth, Pega was the life of the party, aiding businesses in their quest for digital supremacy. But as the weight of added features, user demands, and ever-increasing costs began to build, Pega started to sport the digital equivalent of a beer belly and creaky knees. The once-striking software now found itself wheezing and sweating to keep up with younger, more nimble competitors.

The complexity of Pega’s insides grew, like a relic of a bygone era, increasingly incomprehensible to the casual observer. Much like an aging rock star, Pega stubbornly refused to update its wardrobe or learn new dance moves. The world started to see it as an overpriced, cumbersome beast that had lost its touch, no longer able to keep its finger firmly on the pulse of innovation.

Sadly, Pega’s strength began to wane in its twilight years. With no botox or hip replacement surgeries available to rejuvenate its once-dashing appearance, Pega found itself facing the harsh reality that it had become slow and arthritic, unable to compete with young upstarts like Google and Slack, who were not only innovative but also affordable and energy-efficient.

And so, we gather to mourn the passing of a once-mighty software titan. We raise a glass to the memories of the good times Pega brought, but also reflect on its shortcomings – its stubbornness, its inability to adapt, and the ever-growing costs it inflicted upon those who treasured it.

Pega may no longer be with us, but its spirit lives on as a cautionary tale for software developers everywhere: stay young, stay fresh, and don’t be afraid to reinvent yourself when the world changes around you.

Farewell, Pega! Rest in digital peace, and may your source code find peace and solace amid the cold embrace of the digital afterlife.

Pegasystems

Pegasystems is a large pure-play iBPMS vendor. Its iBPMS supports various usage scenarios analyzed in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant. In the past two years, Pegasystems has ramped up its focus on digital business transformation and mobile application development. This analysis is based on Pega v.7.1.9 and Pega Express.

Strengths of Pega BPM

Pegasystems’ primary strength is its unified architecture based on a powerful business rule management system (BRMS) and predictive analytics decision management engine. The platform combines process flow definitions, rule processing, data handling, cross-platform UIs, a complete mobile application development platform, BAM, content management, case management, application integration and other functions in one model-based development and runtime architecture that supports structured and unstructured process styles.
Two recent moves demonstrate Pegasystems’ commitment to moving into the midmarket. A dedicated salesforce and new solutions are aimed at the price-sensitive midmarket. This year, Pegasystems acquired OpenSpan, a desktop interaction discovery and robotic process automation tool, to provide a noninvasive to solution for midmarket buyers. This acquisition occurred too late to be included in this product evaluation, but has favorably affected Pegasystems’ completeness of vision scores.
Pega 7 includes CEP, operational decision management, predictive analytics and IoT integration. Its “data pages” capability is a flexible data structure that acts as a context broker to enrich process instance data with contextually relevant information from outside the iBPMS.

Weaknesses of Pega BPM

Although Pega Express helps minimize the learning curve for many users, organizations that want to fully use all the features of the Pega 7 platform must follow Pega’s solution development methodology, which involves educating and changing the roles of business people, analysts and IT staff members. Although Pegasystems continues to add consultants, expand alliances with third-party integrators and expand the reach of Pega Academy, customer references still report difficulty finding sufficient resources with Pega 7 expertise.
Pega’s Strategic Apps, Cobrowse and OpenSpan offerings appeal to midmarket customers, but Pega is not aggressively promoting Pega 7 and Pega Express as stand-alone iBPMS platforms to the midmarket.
Further, customer references surveyed by Gartner — which were larger enterprises — indicated a lackluster level of satisfaction with the cost versus value returned by the product.

Alternative to Pega BPM — Tallyfy

Problem — BPMN makes modelling far too complicated

A great alternative to Pegasystems would be the ability to model processes simply. Just because you have some big BPMN model doesn’t make it clever or useful. In the end, people can/will still have to actually do the process, which comes down to email/spreadsheets (unless you want a 6-month IT project). It’s ridiculous to use BPMN in today’s age — where people collaborate and don’t follow flowcharts anyway.

Problem — only IT and business analysts can map processes

Tallyfy is the only tool that enables anyone to map out a process — since most people understand the simplicity of the tool in 60 seconds. The alternative to Pega BPM is not really an alternative at all — it’s an inevitable switch that business users crave.

Problem — nobody looks at process maps while they work

Tallyfy provides self-service simplicity to workflows, along with the power you need.

Consider a beautiful alternative to Pega — Tallyfy

It integrates to everything, and it works for everyone. Take a look at Tallyfy – as a viable, user-friendly alternative to Pegasystems.

Auto-document and track workflows with other people in real-time

SCHEDULE A CHAT 🤙🏼

Is legacy BPM actually going to work for business users?

Tallyfy is the only process tool that anyone can understand in 60 seconds. Legacy BPM systems can take 6 months to deploy - if they work at all.

In the last 10 years - amazing changes happened to business software. "Old BPM" software is tired and broken. It never worked for business users. Here's why.

Users are now deciding to buy software themselves. Old BPM was bought by your IT department, who didn't generally care about user experience - as long as it was made by a large/boring company.
Cloud tools are now free to try by anyone, anytime. With Old BPM you had to call sales and wait for 50 questions just to look at it and finally decide it sucks.
People want to share workflows with clients. With Old BPM you were stuck with trying to automate internal processes only. Your clients would be very scared and run a mile from it.
People expect to integrate cloud tools without IT. With Old BPM you had get engineers to write code to make a simple integration. That's now become a drag-and-drop service.
People expect to work on phones. This means giant, clunky flowcharts in Old BPM are dead - because they don't fit on your phone's screen - and only define "the perfect process".
People are tired of flowcharts. Old BPM was all about the high priest telling you how a process can/will be done, and you would obey. Now - modern workers and teams are paid to collaborate.
People expect all the benefits of the cloud. Old BPM was never cloud-born and was never designed for the cloud. And that creates a massive bunch of missed opportunities.
Companies of all sizes need process management - and never had it. Since Old BPM was so expensive and complicated, only large companies could afford it. The rest of us were left out.
People are excited about AI - but confused about where to begin. With Old BPM you have zero chance of using AI without an army of engineers. With cloud-born systems like Tallyfy - it's childs' play to use any AI you like to run amazing automations for photos, voice, video and more.
The most important part is this - what does Tallyfy offer that BPMN (used by legacy BPM systems) does not? It's true - Tallyfy actually has things you need - that no BPM can offer. Read more about it here