Pega Cloud Summit at a glance
The 2026 Pega Cloud Summit wasn’t just five days of presentations — it was a concentrated look at how Pega‑as‑a‑Service is evolving to deliver more predictable outcomes, stronger AI‑led delivery, and faster paths from Blueprint to go‑live for clients and partners. Across internal deep‑dive sessions and the two public days focused on business value, modernization, and practical cloud operations, one theme became unmistakably clear: the best experiences with Pega happen when the full delivery ecosystem — updates, PDC intelligence, PDM automation, observability, and operational governance — works together as a service rather than as infrastructure.
This reflection shares what we learned behind the scenes, the insights that shaped the highest‑rated sessions, and the key takeaways that matter most for organizations building on Pega today. Whether you’re exploring Blueprint‑driven delivery, preparing for modernization, or scaling mission‑critical workloads, these lessons are meant to give you a clearer view of what’s coming — and how it will directly improve your day‑to‑day experience with Pega‑as‑a‑Service.
If you missed the session live and need a quick recap, this is how we structured the week.
Pega-internal sessions:
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Day 1: Look Outside – Business & Sales, with keynote by Ken Stillwell
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Day 2: Look Inside – People & Processes, with keynote by Frank Guerrera
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Day 3: Look Inside – Technology with deep technical tracks on how to build scalable applications on Pega Cloud
Public sessions:
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Day 4: Why Pega‑as‑a‑Service – Business Value & ROI, with keynote by John Higgins
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Day 5: Practical Day‑to‑Day Advantages of Pega‑as‑a‑Service, with AMA with John Higgins & Frank Guerrera
Despite only two public days, for me this Summit was a full five‑day event and each of those days felt like its own small go‑live, with real users, immediate feedback, and countless decisions shaping the experience. Only the last two days were public, but even there we saw remarkable engagement, with nearly 500 attendees joining the external sessions across two days and an exceptionally high NPS to match.
The team behind
First things first, I want to start with gratitude - because none of this works without the people behind it.
Presenters.
We had speakers joining from multiple regions and time zones, and some colleagues from India stayed up very late to deliver high‑quality content in the EU afternoon slots. Their dedication made a real difference.
Executives.
Ken, Frank and John anchored the summit with strategic clarity - not just presenting, but framing how Pega‑as‑a‑Service evolves, why AI‑led delivery changes our operating model, and why predictable quality matters more than speed alone.
Community & Enablement Teams.
All communications, invitations, registrations, follow‑ups - seamless. These are the invisible mechanics of a successful event.
AV & Production Teams.
We prepared for the unexpected: the AV team expanded our Zoom capacity to safely exceed the 500 concurrent participants mark, just in case. We didn’t end up hitting it, but that highlights the level of preparedness and care for the audience. Video production team worked relentlessly to deliver all the recordings to the audience.
Partner Success Team.
They mobilized outreach directly to partners to ensure broad awareness and participation.
Learner perspective
Personally, I wasn’t just an organizer, I was very much a learner too. There is always something to absorb when real experts come together. I especially enjoyed the cloud‑scaling sessions, both the architectural overview and the deep dive into Kafka. So much thought has gone into ensuring the platform doesn’t crumble under heavy loads, and seeing that engineering discipline up close was genuinely inspiring. These sessions were internal this year, but we will look to share some extracts and likely bring them into the public agenda next time.
Another highlight for me was the persona‑based approach in the PDM session. It was so intuitive and relatable that the narrative almost carried itself. I’d love to see more of that style adopted industry‑wide — it makes complex technical topics instantly clearer and far more engaging.
What really stayed with me were the human moments.
Every time I asked the audience to “send an emoji if you’re back from break”, I received everything from rocket ships to hedgehogs - enough to make me laugh on the spot.
I also got unexpected pings from a couple of former colleagues I hadn’t spoken with in years - a small reminder that even an online-only event can create meaningful reconnections.
We conducted surveys for both public days, and the results were overwhelmingly positive.
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Very high satisfaction: many “Very satisfied” and NPS 9–10 ratings
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Majority rated sessions “Excellent” or “Useful” across all topics.
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Strong appreciation for opening keynotes and Blueprint → GenAI → Roadmap flow.
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Feedback themes, which we will consider for planning next Summit (more about that below):
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More time for demos
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More hands-on examples
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More days
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Shorten some sessions and tighten their scope
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Several respondents personally thanked me for the facilitation and overall flow, which I genuinely appreciated. It’s always encouraging to know that the format, pacing, and interaction landed well for people — and it reinforces how important it is to create an environment where questions and dialogue feel natural.
And yes - some people pointed out “ideas for improvements” (and quite rightly; that’s what a survey is for!), including earlier invitations, tighter timing on breaks, and more demos. Perfect. This feedback is exactly what I wanted - honest, direct, actionable, and shaping the next iteration.
What’s next? Post-Summit content publishing schedule
The summit doesn’t end at the last call.
Here’s what happens next:
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Recordings: We’re finalizing the recordings now and will publish them to the Expert Circle shortly.
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Cumulative Q&A: we collected all questions (across Slido, Zoom Q&A, chats) and will publish detailed answers - several people specifically requested this in the survey.
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Follow‑up blog series: a set of articles from presenters expanding on their sessions, including additional reflections, examples, and sometimes clarifications we simply didn’t have time for live.
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New webinar series: topics that scored highest in the survey will be considered for dedicated Expert Circle sessions.
The next Summit
I’m intentionally not making commitments, but here are ideas emerging from feedback:
More days
People wanted more depth and more time. Possibly we will make 3 or 4 instead of 2 for external content.
Hands‑on / labs
This was the most requested improvement:
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hands‑on with PDM
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hands‑on with PDC
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hands‑on with MyPega Cloud and network configuration
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hands‑on with Blueprint → Infinity → Production pipeline
There are other hands-on opportunities, but anyway its under consideration.
Hybrid format
Some people asked for an offline event.
Offline brings great energy but also creates barriers - limited space, travel costs, time zones.
So we may consider hybrid setups:
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centralized studio for presenters
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optional in‑person pods for partners or regions
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virtual-first design
And I really do invite ideas: so share your thoughts in the comments or reach out to me directly.
This summit evolves with you.
What means Pega‑as‑a‑Service?
If there’s one message I would highlight from all five days, it’s this:
Pega‑as‑a‑Service is more than just cloud and it is the best positioned to be the guardian and an enabler of the Blueprint Delivered methodology.
Our leaders said it better than I ever could:
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“The whole journey from blueprint to go‑live is best supported on Pega Cloud - or Pega‑as‑a‑Service as we call it now.”
— Ken Stillwell -
“Clients shouldn’t think about nodes or VPCs. They should think about outcomes. That’s why I’ve spent eight years shifting the conversation away from cloud as infrastructure.”
— Frank Guerrera -
“Blueprint has absolutely revolutionized how we envision and design workflows… 80% of clients who go from Blueprint to go‑live reach their first NLP in under 90 days.”
— John Higgins -
“DevOps and SaaS as we know them will rapidly evolve. With AI and Blueprint, we’ll rewrite their definitions.”
— Frank Guerrera -
“We maintain cloud choice, but we have a clear cloud preference - because the best experience is on Pega Cloud.”
— John Higgins
These themes came back again and again:
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Predictable AI, not random AI
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Design‑time reasoning, not runtime risk
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Modernization through staying current
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Scale and resilience as shared services
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Innovation at the service layer, not the hardware layer
Pega‑as‑a‑Service isn’t a rebranding.
It’s the recognition that what we operate is a full delivery ecosystem, including:
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updates and staying current
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monitoring and observability
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PDC intelligence
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PDM automation
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security services
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operational governance
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migration, sizing, onboarding
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and yes, infrastructure - but only as the foundation
This is why the Summit resonates: it tells the story of a service, not a server infrastructure.
Closing Thoughts
If you’ve read this far: thank you.
And now the simplest next step:
Join the Pega‑as‑a‑Service Expert Circle
This is where:
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recordings will be posted
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cumulative Q&A will go
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follow-up blogs will appear
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webinar series will be announced
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discussions will continue
This community is the home of everything we built during the Summit - and everything we’re about to build next.
It took me almost two weeks after the Summit to pause, breathe, and gain the distance I needed to reflect — not just on how the five days unfolded, but on what they revealed about where we should go next. The intensity of running the event, combined with ongoing client work, meant I needed that space to think clearly. But that pause turned out to be incredibly productive.
Stepping back allowed me to see the structure of the next Summit with better clarity. It also surfaced a whole list of follow‑up pieces I now want to publish — deeper dives into the topics that sparked the strongest engagement, clarifications we couldn’t address live, and expansions on the ideas that deserve more than a 50‑minute session.
This summit is my most memorable working week of the year - exhausting, energizing, humbling, inspiring.
Thank you to everyone who made it what it was.
And thank you to everyone who will help shape what it becomes.
See you on the Expert Circle —
Ivan