founded Pegasystems in 1983 at the age of 27, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Prior to founding the company, in the early 1980s Trefler had developed computer systems that could play chess. During the company's early years it focused on providing case management, namely for companies such as American Express. Trefler recollects that when he started Pegasystems, he wanted to create software that eased the heavy lifting that business people deal with, as well as software that understood how business-people wanted things to work, commenting "it turns out to be a fairly hard problem to solve." An article in Computerworld traces business rules engine to the early 1990s and to products from the likes of Pegasystems, Fair Isaac Corp and ILOG. As a private company, Pegasystems was "bootstrapped" initially, but did not take on outside investors. The company went public in 1996 with initial and secondary public offerings, and began trading on NASDAQ under the symbol PEGA. Raising several millions in funding in the process, going public freed the company from needing to pursue venture capital investments. Pegasystems entered a period of financial trouble in the late 1990s, following a dispute with its accountants, Ernst & Young. After restating their earnings, Pegasystems faced an investigation by the SEC, which was dropped in 2002.
Acquisitions
In March 2010, Pegasystems acquired the enterprise software company Chordiant for around $161.5 million. The acquisition gave Pegasystems access to new markets such as online training, telecommunications and healthcare, with Pegasystems integrating Chordiant and its customer relationship management technology into its existing operations. Pega Cloud was introduced using Amazon Web Services in 2012, and in October 2013, Pegasystems acquired the mobile application developer Antenna Software for $27.7 million. Located in New Jersey, Antenna also had bases in Kraków and Bangalore.
Recent history
Pegasystems hired a cloud technology proponent to develop its cloud technology strategy in 2014. Over the following year, Pegasystems invested in network operations in North America and India to support its cloud services. In May 2014, Pegasystems acquired the Bangalore-based MeshLabs, a text mining and analytics software startup. The Times of India reported that Pegasystems would integrate MeshLabs's text analytics software to "gather unstructured social media data and decode it into actionable business insights for its clients." The financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. Pegasystems acquired Firefly in June 2014, a co-browsing tool funded by First Round Capital. The startup from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was the company's first move into the cobrowsing market. By the summer of 2014, Pegasystems remained headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts with 2,700 employees. By July 2014 the company was worth around US$1 billion. By early 2015, Pegasystems remained a publicly traded company on the Nasdaq, with 3,000 employees, 30 offices, and "more than half a billion dollars in revenue." As of February 2015, the company had active partnerships with IT outsourcing companies such as Hexaware, , Tata Consultancy Services, InfosysBSE, WiproBSE, HCL Technologies, Accenture and Cognizant. By September of that year, companies who had built teams of Pegasystems specialists included Virtusa, Accenture, Ernst & Young and Cognizant. Between 2005 and 2015, Pegasystems had average sales growth of 21% per year. There was a steady rise in the company's share price in 2015, with higher than expected revenues from the year prior. In January 2016, it was reported that Pegasystems planned on raising its number of employees significantly, and the company announced the acquisition of OpenSpan Inc. in April 2016. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, OpenSpan specialized in robotic process automation and workforce analytics software. In 2016, Pegasystems announced the launch of the Pega University Academic Program, offering training and certification on the Pega 7 platform for educators and students. Since 2006, the company has held an annual users' conference, PegaWorld. Clients Google, Aflac, and Anthem gave testimonials on using Pega software at the 2018 PegaWorld conference.
Products and services
Pegasystems develops and supports software for customer engagement and operations. In particular, Pegasystems specializes in software for business process management and customer relationship management, and is seen as offering more bespoke technology than competitors such as Oracle Corporation or SAP ERP. The company's current core software product is the Pega Platform, part of its Pega Infinity suite of applications for customer engagement and digital process automation, which are designed to connect customer interfaces with back-end process automation. Pegasystems states its applications are certified to work on Google Cloud and other public cloud platforms, including Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Pivotal’s Cloud Foundry. In 2018 Pega announced platform additions that used artificial intelligence for marketing campaigns, customer interfaces, and robotic automation, as well as a Blockchain kit for Ethereum. As of late 2013, Pegasystem’s core software, PegaRULES Process Commander, was related to BPM. Pegasystems Inc. in March 2016 announced Pega Client Lifecycle Management, an application "that streamlines and automates corporate client onboarding" for banks by " complex CLM processes on a global scale in a single application, reducing onboarding time by 70 percent and reducing costs by 60 percent." The company has added artificial intelligence into its customer service software to allow interactions to occur on multiple communication channels at once. The company’s low-code development platform was highlighted in a 2018 Wall Street Journal article, with Pegasystems’ chief technology officer explaining that the software allowed developers to "drag and drop to configure applications,” minimizing development time. In April 2020, Pegasystems Inc. announced the launch of a Crisis Small Business Lending reference application which helps financial institutions manage emergency loan applications from small businesses seeking COVID-19 financial relief.
Clients and notable projects
Pegasystems specializes in the following industries: financial services, insurance, life sciences, healthcare, government, manufacturing, high tech, communications and media, energy, and utilities. While core areas have traditionally included banking and financial sectors, more recent areas include manufacturing, life sciences and healthcare. As of 2013, other clients included "largely Fortune 500 companies" such as ING, Lloyds Banking Group, BAA, and the state of Maine, which commissioned Pegasystems to create a BPM system to cut administrative costs. By July 2014, PayPal, Cisco Systems, and Philips were using Pegasystems’ CRM software, and BNY Mellon announced they would be integrating Pega into its operations as part of their efficiency strategy.
