Management of externalized services

When you externalize third-party services, you can choose from several installation options. The right option depends on your organization’s skills and intended usage. Expertise in services such as Kafka, Elasticsearch, and Cassandra helps you maximize the value of these services.

Choose one of these options to manage third-party services:

• Self-managed 
• Self-managed with a vendor license 
• Vendor-managed SaaS 
• Pega Cloud®

Self-managed

This option is suitable for organizations that have a dedicated team with advanced technical expertise in managing open‑source third‑party platforms. In this model, your organization installs, hosts, maintains, and manages the open‑source versions of Kafka, Elasticsearch or OpenSearch, and Cassandra on its own infrastructure by using Kubernetes orchestration.

You manage all operational aspects, including deployment configuration, performance tuning, updates, security patches, backup and recovery, and troubleshooting. Support relies on community resources and internal knowledge rather than vendor guarantees. Many global enterprises already have in-house skills for managing these technologies at scale, which makes this option cost‑effective when the required knowledge is available.

Expertise required: Advanced knowledge of Kubernetes, container orchestration, and the specific technologies (Kafka, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, Cassandra) is essential.

Self-managed with vendor license 

This option is similar to the self‑managed model, in which your organization hosts and manages the software within its own infrastructure. However, you purchase a commercial license from a vendor. The license typically provides access to proprietary features, maintenance support, and updates. Your organization must still have operational knowledge to run the services. This scenario applies when the skills required to operate the services meet business needs, but regular maintenance support is not part of your organization's core responsibilities.

Your organization retains operational control and must have the technical knowledge to deploy and configure the services in Kubernetes. The benefit of this model is the combination of internal control with vendor‑backed support. This option is appropriate when your organization has the operational expertise but requires vendor support for critical production systems.

Expertise required: Strong technical knowledge in Kubernetes and the specific services, with vendor support available for complex issues.

Vendor-managed SaaS 

Software as a Service (SaaS) is fully managed by the vendor in its cloud infrastructure. Providers such as Confluent Cloud for Kafka, Elastic Cloud for Elasticsearch, or Instaclustr for Cassandra host the services, manage deployment, apply updates, implement security measures, and provide ongoing maintenance.

Your organization accesses the services through a subscription model and integrates them with Pega Platform by using secure connections. This option requires minimal internal expertise in infrastructure management, so your team can focus on integration and application development.

This model is suitable when your organization wants to use these services without investing in specialized deployment or maintenance features or when rapid deployment is a priority.

Expertise required: Integration skills to connect Pega Platform with the SaaS solutions; minimal infrastructure management expertise.

Pega Cloud

With Pega Cloud, Pega provides a fully managed, end-to-end solution where all aspects of Pega Platform and the required externalized services are managed by the Cloud operations team. The Pega Cloud team handles deployment, configuration, monitoring, updates, security, and maintenance of Kafka, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, and Cassandra, along with the core Pega Platform.

This approach provides the highest level of service management, enabling your organization to concentrate on application development and business logic without worrying about infrastructure, Kubernetes orchestration, or service management. Pega Cloud offers an optimized, thoroughly tested configuration that follows best practices and ensures compatibility across all components.

This option is ideal for organizations that want to maximize development velocity and minimize operational overhead, or for those without internal expertise in managing complex cloud-native infrastructure.

Expertise required: None for infrastructure management; focus remains on Pega application development.

The following table shows who owns the deployment infrastructure and maintenance support for each option for managing third-party services:

By understanding and selecting the appropriate management option, LSAs can ensure efficient integration and operation of third-party services in Pega Platform.

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