Watch now as Pega details their experience with OpenSearch, demonstrating how they leverage AI agents to design, automate, and optimize decisions and workflows at scale. Read the Full Case Study, courtesy of NetApp Instaclustr, below.
Key takeaways from the case study:
- Pega’s Scale and Architecture: Pega Cloud operates globally with 2 million unique monthly users, 1 billion cases processed yearly, and high uptime. Their architecture uses AI decisioning, workflow automation, and case management, connecting to various data sources and cloud services. Search is a critical component of their architecture.
- The Journey to OpenSearch: Pega migrated from Elasticsearch to OpenSearch. They use an index isolation architecture for security, where each index has a unique encryption key.
- Pega and NetApp Instaclustr Partnership:
- Pega partnered with NetApp Instaclustr for fully managed open-source data infrastructure, including OpenSearch, Cassandra, and Kafka.
- This partnership has resulted in significant benefits, such as 99.99% reliability, over 60,000 hours saved annually in management time, and the migration of over 1,000 Elasticsearch to OpenSearch nodes.
- NetApp Instaclustr provides managed services, support, and consulting across various open-source technologies.
Case Study: Pega saves 60,000+ hours in annual management time with OpenSearch
Industry
Enterprise Software and Cloud Services
Technologies used
• Apache Cassandra ®
• Apache Kafka ®
• OpenSearch
Pega provides the leading AI-powered platform for enterprise transformation. The world’s most influential organizations trust their technology to reimagine how work gets done by automating workflows, personalizing customer experiences, and modernizing legacy systems.
Challenges:
- Managing complexity of tightly coupled infrastructure solutions of embedded Apache Cassandra, Apache Kafka, and OpenSearch
- Scaling operations globally while maintaining efficiency
Results:
- 60,000+ hours of management time saved through partnership with NetApp Instaclustr to manage Apache Cassandra, Apache Kafka, and OpenSearch within Pega’s own cloud accounts
- Enabling seamless multi-cloud solution across AWS and Google Cloud through the Instaclustr platform
- Achieving consistent 99.95% SLA compliance while reducing operational overhead
For Pega, innovation is the foundation of its success. The global software leader has been empowering enterprises for over 40 years with its AI-powered platform, helping clients streamline operations, create seamless customer experiences, and solve complex business challenges. However, with increasing data volumes and a drive to modernize their Pega Cloud offerings, Pega encountered a critical challenge: managing growing operational complexities without diverting resources away from their innovative core.
Determined to focus on agility and value creation, Pega tapped into NetApp Instaclustr’s multi-technology managed platform to drive extreme scalability, improve operational efficiency, and deliver powerful customer-facing solutions at scale.
Untangling complexity to build innovation
Pega faced the pressing need to simplify their infrastructure while adopting emerging technologies capable of processing larger workloads. The Pega Cloud had been pivotal in helping enterprises streamline operations, but its tightly coupled systems were increasingly difficult to scale. For years, embedding core technologies like Apache Cassandra directly into the Pega platform was both relevant and effective. However, as workloads grew and customer demands diversified, this approach became a barrier to innovation, creating inefficiencies, redundant resource use, and coordination challenges. Ramzi Souri, VP of Cloud Technologies at Pega, recalls the challenges of their previous architecture. “Anytime we scaled Cassandra nodes, we had to scale the entire Pega platform. It was time and resource-intensive.” This inflection point sparked a broader strategic conversation around the future of their infrastructure. Instead of continuing to build and manage these technologies internally, they saw the opportunity to focus more deeply on innovation and delivering value to their clients by adopting a partnership-led approach through managed services. The decision marked a pivotal shift from ownership to collaboration, enabling their team to move faster and do more for their enterprise customers. Finding a partner with expertise across open-source technologies was pivotal for this move. For solutions like Apache Cassandra, Apache Kafka, and OpenSearch, Pega discovered Instaclustr’s platform to be the ideal fit, providing the depth of experience and scalability required to support their evolving infrastructure needs.
Building a cloud for tomorrow
The decision to partner with Instaclustr brought immediate clarity to Pega’s cloud modernization efforts. Each enabling technology, be it Cassandra for high-volume data scalability, Kafka for streaming real-time data, or OpenSearch for complex query management, was fully managed by Instaclustr. By seamlessly integrating these workloads into Pega’s own AWS and Google Cloud environments, Pega achieved unparalleled visibility, agility, and reliability.
Instaclustr’s transparent approach, operating entirely within Pega’s own cloud accounts, played a pivotal role in the partnership. “We needed a solution that gave us full visibility without being a mysterious black box. Instaclustr gave us exactly that, making them more than just a vendor—they’re an extension of our team,” said Souri.
Reshaping team dynamics and focus
Managing operational responsibilities for Cassandra, Kafka, and OpenSearch in partnership with Instaclustr brought game-changing results to Pega’s day-to-day operations. “We used to allocate nearly 30 engineers and operators globally to manage platforms like Cassandra,” said Souri. “Now, our operational team can fully focus on improving customer-facing features of our Pega Infinity platform instead of fully dedicating resources to managing these services. Thanks to Instaclustr, we’ve saved approximately 60,000 hours of management time annually for Cassandra and avoided hiring over 30 additional people to manage our other open source technologies.” By partnering with Instaclustr, Pega not only reclaimed valuable time but also built a foundation for continuous innovation. This strategic collaboration ensured consistent uptime for the Pega Cloud, with 99.95% SLA compliance, allowing enterprise clients to run mission-critical workflows seamlessly.
Delivering client-first results for the future
Pega’s operational vision for the future includes ambitious goals such as multi-hyperscale failover and cross-region disaster recovery, offering enterprises resilience in an unpredictable digital ecosystem. Each of these goals is fueled by a managed services strategy that supports operational needs at speed and efficiency. “With Instaclustr managing everything under the hood, our customers can trust us to get infrastructure out of their way. We’ve reclaimed the time we need to innovate, and that’s invaluable.”
