Pegasystems has announced a strategic collaboration with AWS to drive IT modernization using the cloud computing giant’s generative AI services.
The five-year deal will give users of Pega Blueprint, the company’s application modernization and development platform, access to Amazon Bedrock and AWS Transform.
Bedrock is Amazon’s flagship AI service, offering customers the ability to choose from a selection of in-house and third-party AI models, while Transform uses agentic AI workflows to automate application modernization lifecycles.
According to Pegasystems, the tie-up between the two firms will enable enterprises to dramatically accelerate modernization projects and tackle technical debt - a key issue affecting businesses which hampers AI adoption.
John Higgins, chief of client and partner success at Pegasystems, said the collaboration marks “another major step” in helping enterprises accelerate legacy application transformation goals.
“It’s no longer enough to keep applying incremental changes to legacy systems in the AI era,” he said.
“Clients want to drive strategic business process changes to capture the AI driven productivity improvements; eliminating technical debt, enabling dynamic and intelligent workflows are significant value drivers for organizations seeking to embrace AI to drive business agility.”
What customers can expect from the AWS-Pega deal
Pegasystems has been highly vocal on the potential of AI to transform application and IT infrastructure modernization in recent years.
The firm unveiled the Blueprint platform in early 2024, and has launched a raft of new AI-powered capabilities in the 18 months following its launch.
With this in mind, creating deeper ties between Blueprint and AWS Transform makes sense. The company noted that drawing upon the agentic AI capabilities of the AWS service will help users “accelerate their journey to the cloud faster and more efficiently” by simplifying legacy system modernization.
"Generative AI is not only revolutionizing what customers can build in the cloud, but with services like AWS Transform, it's fundamentally changing how quickly and seamlessly they can get to the cloud in the first place," said Chris Grusz, managing director of technology partners at AWS.
The same logic applies to Bedrock, as it will allow customers to draw upon a range of AI models that can be used across its suite of solutions.
Indeed, Pegasystems said the AI model service will act as the “primary generative AI foundation” powering both Blueprint and the Pega Platform - an AI-based workflow automation service used for building applications.
“Now powered with Amazon Bedrock, clients can securely leverage generative AI large language models (LLMs) from companies including Anthropic, Amazon, Cohere, Meta, and more,” the company said.
“Pega clients can confidently use the power of Amazon Bedrock across the entire app development lifecycle – from requirements analysis to initial workflow design to continual refinement.”
Tackling technical debt
A key talking point for Pegasystems over the last two years has been the impact of legacy infrastructure and technical debt on broader AI strategies.
While enterprises are keen on AI adoption and investing heavily on this front, many are working with outdated tech that simply isn’t up to the task of contending with cumbersome AI workloads.
In a recent survey conducted by Savanta on behalf of Pegasystems, more than two-thirds (68%) of respondents identified legacy systems and applications as a key barrier to adopting new technologies.
Notably, the study found that many enterprises are now caught in a vicious cycle of “legacy dependency”, whereby they can’t embrace new technologies due to the fact that overhauling critical legacy applications may create larger problems.
Nearly half (48%) of respondents highlighted this as a key factor behind sluggish modernization progress. Another 68% said legacy systems are preventing them from improving operational efficiency.
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