PegaWorld 25 Opening Keynote - First Impressions from Industry Analysts and Influencers

Last week Paul Greenberg and I recorded a couple of CRM Playaz episodes live from Pegasystems' annual user conference PegaWorld, held in Las Vegas.  We sat down with Tara DeZao, Sr. Product Marketing Director, and Matt Healy, Sr. Director, Product Strategy & Marketing, to dig into some of the announcements and developments coming out of the event. Clips of those conversations will be coming shortly...

One thing I was especially interested in learning more about was the Blueprint demo that took place during the opening keynote by Pega CPO Kerim Akgonul of uploading a video of someone walking through what an ancient COBOL application does. Then he uploaded that video, along with other kinds of content, into Pega Blueprint. And within minutes Blueprint takes all those inputs and with a few clicks and button pushes transformed all that content into a conversational AI-driven application.

That was the first time out of about ten industry events I've been to this year where a video of someone describing what an app does was used to help create a full blown app.  And it not only got my attention, but pretty all the analysts and influencers that joined Paul and me on our opening keynote watch party, including:

• Rebecca Wettemann - CEO and Principal Analyst of Valoir
• Adrian Swinscoe - CX advisor, author, speaker, and thought leader
• Brian Sommer - Founder and President of TechVentive

We also need to shout out to Liz Miller, VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, for being our "floor coresspondent" and "reporting" to us from the keynote floor. And another shout out to industry observer and corporate narrative expert Alan Berkson for the great running commentary in the comments section during the watch party.

As I've stated before, while most of these industry user conferences have several keynotes throughout the event, the most important keynote - and the one which gets the most attention for the vendor for the entire year - is the opening keynote.  Which is why we like to hold watch parties to see how the vendors use this time, what they talk about, and see how they present their story. And finally, we like to invite some of our colleagues to join us to discuss what each of us thought about what we heard, and how it compares to what we've heard at other events we've attended so far this year.

Below is a clip from our discussion afrer viewing the opening keynote.  It's condensed to keep things moving.  Now usually we keep the entire focus on the opening keynote because of its importance, but we also thought it was important to also hold a watch party for the Day 2 keynote which featured presentations from Pega CTO Don Schuerman, and Dr. Rob Walker, Vice President Decisioning & Analytics. So we've included a clip of our discussion right after that keynote as well. And, as I've done as part of are last couple of watch party posts, I'm including an analysis of our conversations from the LLMs, and this time it's coming from Gemini.

Edited Transcript: PegaWorld 25 – Opening Keynote First Impressions

Rebecca Wettemann:  I thought the strongest part was the COBOL [demo]. I think Unilever [customer conversation] could've been used a lot more effectively than it was.

To your point Adrian, about Vodafone [customer conversation], yeah it was quite short but I would've loved to see with both of the customers more of an embodiment of how they're using Blueprint - not just saying that they were using Blueprint.

Adrian Swinscoe:  They talked about path to the autonomous enterprise and then you don't quite see a path or a vision being told or articulated.  I'm left a little bit wanting.

The line from the legacy transformation around how you can take that COBOL application and you can create video with a bit of narration and that you can ingest it, and then try and create something on a modern kind of platform. there's a big key to legacy transformation.

But unfortunately I didn't feel like that story came out.

Brian Sommer:  When people start using this transformation stuff and then all they're really talking about is "I wanna clean up some old COBOL code and get it and understand what's in it so I can maybe write a new application that does a better job of what the old one did," I think that's a real misuse of the transformation term. That's a re-platforming… what that really is.

Where's the radical rethinking? I guess I would say I was left wanting on that point. And I don't know where that fits in because these tools interrogated probably a 50-year-old COBOL app and basically gave you a mobile version of a 50-year-old mobile app.

There's an opportunity here that just got missed to really paint what the real capabilities could be all about.

Paul Greenberg: It was a tech keynote and there was no question about that .The next phase of their corporate narrative so to speak is autonomous service and that is where they theoretically have been going; but there was nothing to that effect [here].

Blueprint remains my favorite product, but the customer examples… Unilever just lost me completely. I heard what he was saying but I didn't understand what he meant. And Vodafone, I saw it from the left brain so to speak; Here's the results we get operationally from using Blueprint. That was helpful but again not much to it.

The best part of this whole thing was Alan [Trefler] really when it boiled down to it. And to Alan Berkson's point about his storytelling,  it was great; but then again he is great at that.

So on the whole I appreciate what I saw I but don't think they quite pulled off what they needed to. Ultimately if you're making a claim you can say anything you want, but be prepared to defend everything you say. And they just weren't. They didn't say anything wrong, they just didn't accomplish what they supposedly were setting out to accomplish.

Brent Leary: The most unique part of this compared to like all the other events we've gone to - and I think it kinda got stepped on because there's so many people talking about "Oh man They're talking COBOL -  was actually the video of some dude illustrating what was going on with the COBOL program and they ingested the video [into Blueprint] and it kicked of that process. I thought that stuck out to me the most.

I mean we were at ServiceNow a couple of weeks ago and they were talking about the partnership with NVIDIA to be able to take PDFs and do a similar thing. But here they uploaded video of somebody talking about this COBOL program and they were able use that. I thought that was really impressive…

When you think about it they announced Blueprint just a year ago. I was there. I recorded a little demo of doing my first Blueprint.   To see how that's progressed…

Once again they do a really good job - and it's really Alan but it's all the others - of taking all the stuff they've built their foundation on (the layer cake approach the center out approach) and now all the stuff they're doing with Blueprint as their foundation. You can see how all the things they've built over the years have led up to this moment, and how they're still rela- relevant. So it doesn't feel like last year was one story and then this year is a completely different story because everybody is talking about one thing.  You can literally see if you've been here for a couple of years how everything they've done is applied and helps them get to this next level.  Unfortunately I think that might've got lost in some of the stuff they were talking about.

I think the Unilever part could've really could've hit a home run, if it was done a little differently.

Brian Sommer: The missing X factor is “ what does this mean to me as a customer”?  Am I gonna use this tool to rebuild old applications, or am I using it to discover a new opportunities to do really cool transformative things?  If the keynote had been structured more along the lines of "If you're a customer and you have this kind of a problem here's how our toolset's evolved to make that even less painless than ever before And if you have this problem here's a different way to look at it and use the tools."

In the Unilever deal it was not clear to me exactly what they were solving for- and therefore why this technology was so purpose-built for knocking that out of the park.

They had a great opportunity and I think somewhere down the line the messaging got muddled up. We're not complaining about the technology. No.  It's just the messaging and the methods they use to present it.

Rebecca Wetteman: There was an opportunity too to talk about how you use Blueprint as the foundation to scale your knowledge of the business and creating that new career for you as a digital transformation expert based on your knowledge of code. That could've been a way to make people feel a lot more excited about the opportunity for them as part of that Pega community, that they missed.

Brent Leary: At a lot of these opening keynotes there's  a strategic partnership piece, I keep going back to Oracle where they had AWS on stage. Because this is such a big thing; we understand enterprise software companies know that you have other other vendor applications. They wanna show you how we're working with them. And it's usually the mid-market enterprise players that don't seem to bake that part into the keynote, which I think is really important.

Paul Greenberg:  Every company they were basically calling strategic was a consulting company. They weren't thinking about ecosystem partners. They were thinking basically about  monetary partners with practices.

Look this is a really good company and I really appreciate how they think about things. I think they'd be a hell of a lot bigger than a billion or what- that's roughly their revenue - if they do these things.  And I always feel a little bit of frustration with them because of that I  want them to do really well. I just think they miss these things.

Brian Sommer:  Their expertise in process automation and workflow stuff is exemplary. And they have used some of their key partners to get them into some massive accounts. But to make it go broader I think they're gonna have to do more and embrace different kinds of partners who can move them into other spaces and sectors.

PegaWorld 25 – Day 2 Keynote First Impressions

Brian Sommer:  Okay So I think we all agree this was the keynote that should have happened yesterday right?

Rebecca Wetteman:  With the exception of [Don Schuerman’s last] demo, yes.

Brian Sommer: I think this deal did a much better job of explaining the story behind the autonomous enterprise and so forth. He finally brought together the workflow component to this new stuff around the AI and the Agentic stuff and the Fabric and the Blueprint.

It really needed some connection and I didn't think we got that yesterday. I think we got a better view of it today. He waited 'til the very last minute and he mentioned getting rid of legacy technical debt.  And to me that would've been a big point to pound home when they were talking about Blueprint.  A way better keynote today than yesterday's. No question about that.

I don't think the Verizon talk or the Rabobank talk were as good as they should've been. But anyway…

Adrian Swinscoe: I would echo Brian's comments. We talk about legacy systems, but there's also heritage in those systems.  It's almost like IP that's been built up years and how you can take that and then make it visible and then improve on it and use the technology to do that.

And Brian you also mentioned the legacy debt. They just released a piece of re- research which talks about legacy debt. I think that the story started to come out, but I didn't think it came out as it didn't speak to the reality as much as it could. And combine the reality with "Actually here's the promise of the future and here's how you can get there."

But I think you can tease it out if you're paying attention. But I think it was it was kind of hard. The storytelling was hard to parse.

Rebecca Wetteman:  I agree with with Brian and and Adrian And I would say too it doesn't matter if the story's hard to parse or not What matters is what their champion goes home with that they can communicate to the rest of the organization. And without giving them which is typically a pretty technical audience that sort of high level non-tech "Here's what you get," in kind of non-technical parlance, I think they did themselves a disservice because all of their champions need to go back and explain to the line of business folks why we're doing with this with Pega. Why it's better. And not about orchestration or Fabric, but about the "Here's what we're going to get" in terms of Brian's point about savings on technical debt; to Adrian's point rationalization of systems… all those things.

Paul Greenberg: If I'm looking at the 2 days I would have organized it to everyone's point a lot differently.  I mean Alan first, Don second et cetera et cetera.  And also organized it so there was some sort of evolutionary theme there. The only thing that was consistent throughout the entire conference was Blueprint is really good.

I thought Don [Schuerman – CTO] saved the whole thing on the bigger picture. And again. to your point Rebecca about the demo, if Don were second [on Day 1 behind Alan Trefler] that's a valuable demo. But not if he's last [on Day 2]. We already saw 5 of those.

Unfortunately there wasn't a single customer that I would say "Okay well that was very good or even or helpful."

Rebecca Wetteman:  I think your customers weren't speaking in their own language which just made it all that more kind of stilted, you know?

Paul Greenberg: Exactly. But on the whole I'm still frustrated I guess because there was so much siloed disconnection. It's like okay there was this vignette and that vignette and that vignette and that vignette, but there was nothing particularly related about it except Blueprint is great.

I really like this company [Pega] and I've liked them for a long time, and I always have found the one thing they did exceptionally well was corporate narratives. And this literally was not a very good version of that.

Liz Miller:  Today was the blockbuster It was explainable and digestible Blueprints is the star but work and workflows as being a totally human artifice is a message they need to lean in on.

Paul Greenberg:  To her point I'd say Don was the blockbuster.

Brent Leary: As Don was going through his thing I could see each of us thinking " Why wasn't this part of yesterday?" The combination of Alan and Don is one that over the years has just been a great one.  Remember when Don used to be like the emcee of this thing?

If you had had Don's explanation of Kerim’s demo right after it that demo would have really hit home a lot harder than I think it did.  

I also think vendors, generally speaking, need to help the customer speakers. Like Rebecca said if they each get up there and just talk in the vendor’s language it doesn't help the audience understand how all these 4 customer conversations come together. And this is not just about Pega, this has happened a number of times on a number of these conferences.

I think you need make sure that there's somebody there that kind of orchestrates the customer conversation parts of these segments so that they do all fit. Almost sort of like the drummers [Don had three drummers on stage showing how great each sounded when playing individually but terrible when playing together. But with someone orchestrating things they sounded great playing together] sound good on their own but as a group y- there needs to be some orchestration some guidance And I think that that would have helped tremendously.

Rebecca Wetteman:  I don't know if these customers were over-guided or under-guided Brent.

Brent Leary:  Either way, the right kind of guidance wasn't there.

Adrian Swinscoe:  What's ironic is using the analogy of the drummers and playing to a score. They could have used that analogy on themselves; having an emcee, that conductor that holds it all together. That would have helped.

Brian Sommer: The overall theme. The messaging. The destination. The X marks the spot on where you wanna take people might not have been clearly articulated to the [customer] speakers. And so they could only do what they know. And that was their kind of content or their message or their stump speech.

So anyway I'm not sure the customer is the one that deserves a criticism here. This is about the way the show was constructed.

Paul Greenberg:  I agree that's where it falls. I don't think anyone's blaming the customers themselves. To your point Brian, they did the best they knew to do.

Gemini Analysis of watch party conversations

In the opening keynote at PegaWorld, analysts discussed the presentations, focusing on the COBOL demo, customer conversations, and the overall narrative of the event.

Key points of the discussion included:
*COBOL Demo**: Rebecca Wettemann and Brent Leary found the COBOL demo to be the strongest and most unique part of Day 1, particularly the video illustrating the COBOL program's ingestion into Blueprint. However, Brian Sommer and Paul Greenberg felt it was a "re-platforming" rather than a true transformation, as it only created a mobile version of an old app and missed the opportunity to showcase radical rethinking or broader capabilities. Adrian Swinscoe also felt the story of legacy transformation didn't fully come out[cite: 5, 6].

*Customer Conversations**: The customer conversations, specifically Unilever and Vodafone, were largely seen as ineffective and lacking in detail. Rebecca Wettemann, Adrian Swinscoe, and Paul Greenberg expressed a desire for more embodiment of how customers were using Blueprint, rather than just stating they were using it. Brian Sommer noted that it wasn't clear what problems were being solved for Unilever. Brent Leary suggested that the Unilever part could have been a "home run" if handled differently.

*Narrative and Messaging**: Many attendees felt the overall narrative and vision for the "autonomous enterprise" were not clearly articulated on Day 1. Paul Greenberg noted a lack of content regarding autonomous service, despite it being the next phase of their corporate narrative. Brian Sommer highlighted a missing "X factor" regarding what the technology meant for customers and whether it was for rebuilding old applications or discovering new transformative opportunities. Rebecca Wettemann also pointed out a missed opportunity to discuss how Blueprint could help individuals become digital transformation experts.

*Blueprint Product**: Despite criticisms of the presentations, Blueprint was consistently praised. Paul Greenberg stated it remained his favorite product. Brent Leary noted the progression of Blueprint since its announcement a year prior and how it integrates with Pega's foundational "layer cake" and "center out" approaches.

*Partnerships**: Paul Greenberg and Brian Sommer observed that Pega primarily focused on consulting companies as "strategic" or "monetary" partners, rather than ecosystem partners who could help them expand into new spaces and sectors. Brent Leary emphasized the importance of strategic partnerships, citing Oracle and AWS as an example, and noted that mid-market enterprise players often don't include this in their keynotes.

Day 2 of PegaWorld was generally perceived as a significant improvement over Day 1

Key observations from Day 2 included:
**Improved Storytelling**: Brian Sommer, Adrian Swinscoe, and Liz Miller agreed that Day 2 did a much better job of explaining the story behind the autonomous enterprise, connecting workflow components with AI, Agentic, Fabric, and Blueprint. Adrian Swinscoe noted that the story about legacy debt and heritage systems began to emerge, though it could have been clearer.

**Don Schuerman's Presentation**: Don Schuerman, the CTO, was widely lauded as the "blockbuster" of Day 2, with many feeling his presentation and demo should have been part of Day 1. Rebecca Wettemann believed his demo would have been more valuable if presented earlier.

**Customer Presentations (Continued Issues)**: Despite the overall improvement, the customer talks from Verizon and Rabobank were still considered not as good as they should have been. Rebecca Wettemann and Paul Greenberg felt the customers were not speaking in their own language, leading to stilted and disconnected presentations. Brian Sommer, Paul Greenberg, and Adrian Swinscoe agreed that the issue wasn't the customers themselves, but rather the way the show was constructed and the lack of clear articulation of the overall theme and messaging to the speakers[

.
*Missed Opportunities**: Brian Sommer pointed out that the discussion of "getting rid of legacy technical debt" came too late in Don Schuerman's presentation, as it would have been a strong point for Blueprint. [cite_start]Rebecca Wettemann emphasized the need for Pega's champions to be equipped with high-level, non-technical explanations of the benefits (like savings on technical debt and system rationalization) to communicate to their organizations.

*Overall Frustration**: Paul Greenberg expressed continued frustration over the siloed disconnections in the presentations, despite his long-standing appreciation for Pega's corporate narratives, which he felt were not well-executed at this event. [cite_start]He suggested a different organization for the two days, with an evolutionary theme. rent Leary also highlighted the general need for vendors to help customer speakers orchestrate their conversations so they fit together cohesively.