PEGAPCBA87V1 information source - Pega Certified Business Architect (PCBA) 87V1 Updated: 2024

Today at the Open Hardware Summit in Portland, Alicia Gibb and Michael Weinberg of the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) launched the Open Source Hardware Certification program. It’s live, and you can certify your own hardware as Open Hardware right now.

What Is Open Source Hardware?

Open Source Hardware can’t be defined without first discussing open source software. At its very core, open source software is just a copyright hack, enabled by a worldwide universal computer network. The rise of open source software is tied to the increasing ease of distributing said software, either through BBSes, Usenet, and the web. Likewise, Open Source Hardware is tied to the ease of distributing, modifying, and building hardware.

In the 1980s, there were no services that could deliver a custom circuit board to anywhere on the planet for a dollar per square inch. When open software began, CNC machines were expensive tools, now you can build a very good machine for just a week’s wages. We are currently living at the dawn of Open Source Hardware, enabled by the creation of Open Source design tools that have themselves been used to create physical tools. Inexpensive 3D printers, open source oscilloscopes, circuit board plotters, and the entire hackerspace movement are as revolutionary as the Internet. These devices and the Internet are the foundations for Open Hardware and software, respectively.  The objections to why hardware is incompatible with Open Source no longer apply and small-scale manufacturing techniques are only going to get better.

Open source is a moral imperative in the truest Kantian sense of the word. It is a good unto itself. Of course, this means open source is also mind-numbingly prescriptivist. Holy scrolls have defined dozens of different open source licenses. The relevant license for Open Source Hardware has already been laid out to define the freedoms and responsibilities of all Open Source Hardware creators. Open Source Hardware is a tangible thing, from a laptop to a lampshade, whose design is available so anyone can make, modify, distribute, and sell that thing. Native documentation is required, and software required to run this thing must be based on an OSI-approved license.

The definition of Open Source Hardware has been around for a few years now, and since then the community has flourished, there’s a great gear logo, and you can buy real, functional hardware that bills itself as Open Source Hardware. It’s become a selling point, and this has become a problem.

Many hardware creators don’t adhere to the definition of Open Source Hardware. In some cases, the design files simply aren’t available. If they are, they could be unmodifiable. The software used to create these design files could cost thousands of dollars per seat. This is the problem the movement faces — Open Source Hardware must have a certification program. Unlike open source software, where the source is almost proof enough that a piece of software complies with an open source license, hardware does not have such obvious assurances.

Software Is Closed By Default, Hardware Is Open And The Licenses Are Harder

All software is closed by default. Anything written is covered by copyright, and the developers of open source software choose to license their works under an open source license. Open source software, then, is a copyright hack, enabled because all software is closed by default.

Hardware, on the other hand, is open by default. If you build a device to automatically inject epinephrine intramuscularly, you must go out of your way to patent your device. Only a patent will give you the ability to license your work, and before that patent is published anyone can make their own epinephrine pen. If you build something with an FPGA, the code that programs the FPGA is covered by copyright, but an arbitrary circuit that uses that FPGA isn’t. Any generic piece of Open Source Hardware could be covered under patents, trademarks, and a dozen licenses. Therefore, an Open Source Hardware license is impractical. This is why OSHWA is not releasing an Open Source Hardware license, and instead creating an Open Source Hardware certification program. No Open Source Hardware license could cover every edge case, and a certification is ultimately the only solution.

The Open Source Hardware Certification Program

At last year’s Open Hardware Summit, OSHWA formally announced the creation of the Open Hardware Certification program. Now, this program is live, and the certification database will growing very, very quickly. At its heart, the Open Source Hardware Certification program is pretty simple — create hardware that complies with the community definition of Open Source Hardware.

The theoretical basis for the need of an Open Source Hardware license is the fact that anyone is able to manufacture hardware. Of course, there are limits to technology and no one has a 14nm silicon fab line in their garage. This is a problem for any piece of Open Source Hardware, and the technical capability for anyone to recreate integrated circuits and other high technologies is the sole source of the traditional objections to any open hardware license. Garage-based fabrication is always improving, though, but closed hardware in the form of NDA’d chips will remain a problem for years to come.

The clearest example of the problem with closed-source chips is bunnie’s Novena laptop. This laptop is designed as both a hacker’s laptop and an artifact of Open Hardware. Although most of the chips used in the Novena are available without signing NDAs, open source, and blob-free 3D graphics acceleration was unavailable when the laptop launched. This non-open graphics problem will be fixed with open source drivers, but it does illustrate the problem of Open Source Hardware. Even though chips might be available, there might be binary blobs required for full functionality. You can build an Open Hardware chip in VHDL, but it’s not really open if you have to use closed-source FPGA dev tools.

OSHWA’s solution to this problem is simply asking for hardware creators to act in good faith. The certification program won’t knock points off for using closed source binary blobs if that’s the only way of doing something. Open Source Hardware is just slightly more aware of the pace of technical progress, and what is closed today may be open tomorrow. Building a piece of Open Source Hardware isn’t an all or nothing proposal; just give your best effort to make it open, and technology or reverse engineers will probably make it more open in the future.

Of course, with any certification program, there must be some effort given to enforcement. If an Open Hardware project is certified under the program but does not meet the guidelines of the certification program, fines may be levied against the project creators. Again, good faith of the project creator is assumed, and a project found not in compliance with the certification program will be given 90 days to either fix the problem or remove the project from the certification program. After 90 days, there’s a 120-day period of public shaming, and after that small fines of $500 per month. The worst offender will get a fine of up to $10,000 per month, but that would require years of non-compliance, and it’s very doubtful any conflict with OSHWA will ever reach that stage. It should be noted these fines have a legal basis in the trademark of the OSHW certification logo, and if you don’t use the OSHW logo or certify your project, there’s nothing OSHWA can do.

The old Open Source Hardware ‘gear’ logo — unquestionably a better logo — will still remain in use, and no one is going will look down on you for using it. Using the trademarked OSHW logo, though, is the only way any certification program can be enforced.

The Objections To Open Source Hardware

Of course, the Open Source Hardware Certification program has been more than two years in the making, and that’s time enough for a few people to start having very strong opinions about it. A few years ago, Saar Drimer of Boldport said he won’t be using the Open Source Hardware logo on his boards. This is despite the fact that he loves Open Source Hardware, has written open source PCB design software, and offers a 20% discount on open source contract work. His reason is simple: adding a logo brings baggage, and building Open Source Hardware is not mutually exclusive with putting a logo on a board. Dave Jones is a big supporter of Open Hardware, but he realizes the famous gear logo is becoming meaningless through abuse.

You need only look back on the last twenty or thirty years of the world of Open Source Software to get a sense of where Saar and Dave are coming from; Stallman does not believe in a moral imperative to Open Hardware, whereas most everyone in attendance of today’s Open Hardware Summit does. Gnome versus KDE is nothing compared to the religious war we potentially face between various Open Hardware philosophies. The Open Source Hardware community is relearning what the open source software community learned twenty years ago. We can only hope to learn from their missteps.

But Open Source Hardware has a much bigger obstacle to adoption than politicking and empire building. Open source software is a simple concept — you have a (copy) right to whatever software, music, words, or boat hull designs you create. You can, therefore, give others the right to use, study, share, and modify that work. Physical objects and artifacts do not have copyright, they have patents. Patent law in the United States is atrocious, and just because you were the first to create a useful invention doesn’t mean a patent would be invalidated. This is the greatest challenge to anything developed as Open Source Hardware. The only solution to this is prior art and patent inspectors that know where to look.

This Will Take a While to Work Out

The Open Source Hardware Certification program is going to take a while to unravel. OSHWA doesn’t believe this certification program will be a repository used by patent inspectors looking for prior art. The legal basis for the certification is literally built upon every piece of intellectual property law. It is, perhaps, an answer to the most complex legal questions ever: what is property, what is intellectual property and can the concept of physical things be given away.

No one has an answer to these questions, or at least an answer that can be summed up in one-page FAQ. The Open Source Hardware Certification program is an attempt to answer these questions, and so far it’s the best attempt yet.

None of this matters unless the community gets behind it, and if another competing Open Source Hardware certification or license pops up, the community may very well migrate to that. Judging from the last thirty years of open source software license drama, we can only hope that the community figures this out the first time, and we hope this certification program is a rousing success.

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Low code grew. Although software application development has been able to draw upon libraries, reference architectures and various forms of predefined ‘methods’ [a programming term used to describe a software function of one kind or another]

Not the same as no-code - platforms designed to enable completely non-technical business users to ‘create’ typically smaller and restricted application functionalities, often via simplified drag-and-drop visualization tools - low-code is still for software developers who have generally spent serious years gaining degree-level qualifications and competency in hard coding. Although low-code platforms do also encompass the options for so-called citizen developer businesspeople to perform some application tuning and creation, this technology space remains a place we developers.

As low-code now becomes codified (pun appreciated, but not intended) into the fabric of enterprise software workshops around the world, a new responsibility arises. We must now look for the niche elements of software that can be more accurately optimized. We must look for dovetail joints that sit between business productivity measures and the ability for low-code to deliver functions that will Strengthen the commercial bottom line. We must filter through our low-code systems to make the Developer eXperience (DX) and User eXperience (UX) more intuitive… and, in general, we must continue to build better software.

Styling itself around a branded tagline that reads Build for Change, Pegasystems Inc. is a low-code platform provider that aims to fulfil upon as many (if not all) of those low-platform developments as possible. In full, Pega describes itself as a low-code platform for AI-powered ‘decisioning’ and workflow automation.

The company has this month enhanced its Pega Infinity software suite with new low-code muscle that it hopes will accelerate low-code development in line with the need to continuously optimize existing processes - with those processes being a) initially software-based processes but b) ones that lead directly and adroitly towards improved business processes.

Birth of the autonomous enterprise

What Pega (and to be honest, the rest of the enterprise software space) is working towards is the dream of the so-called autonomous enterprise i.e. a vision of a company of any reasonable size that can rely upon software systems and processes that work autonomously, update themselves autonomously and enable business operations to run autonomously, either with businesspeople being able to self-service adapt technology to their working environment needs or not have to engage with smart systems at all that just ‘figure out’ our needs in any given workplace scenario.

Pega suggests that the concept of the autonomous enterprise is a state of being and mind which unifies Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation to help organizations become more self-optimizing to drive maximum efficiency and effectiveness. The company bids to make this possible with extensions to its generative AI technology - the previously announced Pega GenAI - which now comes with a set of 20 new generative AI-powered ‘boosters’ across Pega Infinity ‘23 to make application development easier, faster and more powerful.

Referred to in this way, we can take AI boosters to refer to connection points between Large Language Model (LLM) datasets and the use of Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies that enable users - and in this case developers too - to humanly speak (which often also means type) intentions and requests of software development environments in order to get them to work in specified ways.

For clarification here, the company has created boosters including the AI-assisted development functionality now available in its Pega App Studio and Prediction Studio software tools - as well as elsewhere throughout its platform. This offers Chat-GPT style text queries to provide developers with help as they create and build. The company says it gives developers and data scientists the tools to build and maintain sophisticated predictive models and algorithms. According to this technology’s product specification sheets, the AI-assisted development panel recommends what the developer needs as they build workflows. “It aggregates information from a number of different sources, provides relevant information where and when it is needed the most, and nudges the developer to adopt best practices,” notes the company.

The idea that low-code caught on in the first place is somewhat interesting suggests Kerim Akgonul, chief product officer at Pega. After all, there is no low-smoking or most other low-form activities as such - although there is perhaps some low-driving with all the smart automobile technology around now. But when it comes to the Pega platform and its usage across the hard-core (low-code) developers using its tools vs. the citizen developers also now touching its platform, how should we really think about this juxtaposition point?

“If you think about the way people build software these days, it’s mostly meetings - the coding time is usually far less than the planning time, so a generative AI-driven application that is 95% right before a human gets into the loop to tweak it makes a lot of sense,” said Akgonul. “The Pega platform’s set of accelerators that get functionality into an application quickly are many and varied. Whether citizen developers are involved at the keyboard level or not, it’s crucial that they are at least involved in order to be able to address the lifecyle of work and articulate the vision of the company’s business unit and their workflows.”

Akgonul further states that his team’s mission is to optimize the underwriting process behind the creation of software development such that it is insured for success. This is primarily because an organization’s business experts have been able to capture their vision in a structured way as part of the total coding process. If companies do this right, they get to a place where business outcomes are quantified and encoded from the start… and at that point the right code can be built.

Humans-in-the-loop

The question that inevitably arises at this point, with all this automation and AI enrichment flying around, is just how safe are these technologies when we come to apply them in the workplace, sometimes in environments that may be bordering on the mission or life-critical? Pega is adamant on this point and explains that the company’s approach will help organizations leverage the power of generative AI while building controls, governance and auditing to keep humans-in-the-loop.

Pega GenAI will offer a secure, plug-and-play architecture that will allow for low-code development of AI prompts, the ability to infuse generative AI functions into their workflows and the freedom to swap in different Large Language Models (LLMs). This approach will help users drive value from generative AI now and into the future. So has the company locked down the security and robustness factor here enough?

“Pega has been working hard to put the right architecture in place with regard to every aspect of generative AI safety, control, management and oversight that is possible in both human and machine terms,” clarified Don Schuerman, Pega CTO.

Schuerman made his comments this month while speaking directly on the subject of whether ‘safer’ generative AI needs to feature not just Large Language Models and open public AI engine power, but also incorporate (and in some cases insist upon) a proprietary data approach where Small Language Models (SLMs) are also used to work on company-specific sensitive data sources - a process some are referring to as private AI as opposed to the public alternative.

“We are well-planned and on the right trajectory for this particular spiral arm of the AI galaxy,” enthused Schuerman. “While some industry vendors are entering the AI space for the first time, ‘private AI’ isn’t a new idea for Pega. We’ve had clients running our Customer Decision Hub technology and our Process AI tools to build and run their own private, self-learning AI models for over a decade. During that time, we’ve built up an enviable bank of experience, best practices and product offerings for aspects of software architecture such as MLOps (our software code revision manager tool manages deployments, testing and retiring of models), AI explainability (our transparent AI ‘T-switch’) and bias test controls to govern AI models. Our clients have deployed tens of thousands of these private models over the years.”

Going further, Schuerman said that when it comes to generative AI for Pega, the company’s architecture is built around a technology known as a Connect-Generative AI layer. This allows software developers and data engineers to build their own prompts using low-code tools and will abstract the prompt itself from the different AI models. Essentially, this is the sort of air-gapping guardrail that those of us in the data science space have been calling out for as a sort of software safety belt all year.

“We have also included mechanisms to automatically replace sensitive Personally Identifiable Information (PII) data with anonymous data in calls to public models. Requests flow through a proxy service that provides an additional layer of protection. In the future, we plan to offer our own private Gen-AI services [in the realm of the Small Language Model approaches already noted here] as well as the ability to for users to run their own local models,” added Schuerman, in what is an arguably more comprehensive response to this entire point of sensitivity than many other commentators.

Inside workings in low-code

In addition to its aforementioned new generative AI-powered boosters, Pega Infinity ‘23 will also include updates to Pega Platform, Pega Customer Decision Hub and Pega Customer Service - all of which form central building blocks to the company’s core IT stack offering.

The types of functionalities on offer here provide us with some insight into how low-code platforms actually work. A reuse library in the Pega App Studio tool enables developers to find reusable software reusable components and pre-engineered business logic while also sharing those resources with others. Pega says that this same function can also be used by citizen developers, although perhaps not quite extending to the no-code end of low-code. Allied to this technology is the Pega Constellation offering and these are software tools focused on improving the User eXperience (UX) factor in enterprise applications through the use of built-in templates and patterns.

There’s an inclusivity factor here in low-code with Pega Infinity ’23, as there of course should be. As such, Pega now offers its approach to enhanced accessibility compliance and does so by following in line with Web Content Accessibility Guides (WCAG) 2.1, a set of guidelines laid down by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). There are also connector technologies here designed to integrate Pega Customer Service (technology that provides functions such as self-service workflows to automate customer query resolutions) with Pega Process Fabric (technology designed to unify the discoverability and prioritization of human - and increasingly now also, machine - workplace tasks) all of which are built to work under the Pega low-code platform umbrella.

“Pega Infinity unifies customer engagement, customer service and intelligent automation capabilities within a single platform to help accelerate digital transformation,” notes Pega, in a technical product statement. “By engaging customers with the right message, at the right time, across any channel, clients can Strengthen customer satisfaction, increase customer lifetime value, and boost productivity.”

Application iteration liberation

At the risk of coining a marketing phrase that one or other low-code vendor (Pega or its competitors) might be keen to adopt, what all these developments push towards is something we could call an application iteration liberation.

In simple terms (and we learned this so well during the pandemic, obviously) organizations in every vertical need to be able to ‘iterate’ their applications to progress them to support new functionalities, connect to new data sources, draw power from new cloud services, work on new form factor devices when they come around and reduce the complexity for accelerated deployments everywhere.

Pegasystems (Pega) clearly draws its name from the winged divine stallion depicted in Greek folklore and Pegasus itself was ultimately brought to Mount Olympus by Zeus where it was stabled next to the thunder god's thunderbolts. Can we see the parallels here? At least low-code is no myth.

Cazenave tells CRN that Pegasystems has an opportunity to double the size of its business by leveraging partners developing on its low-code business automation platform to drive enterprise digital transformation initiatives and penetrate new markets

Longtime IBM ecosystem leader Carola Cazenave has taken the channel chief position at Pegasystems, where she’s ready to double the software vendor’s business by ramping engagement with partners.

After 26 years at Big Blue, Cazenave saw an opportunity for an “entrepreneurial” challenge of the kind she had long dreamed of with the Cambridge, Mass.-based business process automation vendor, which offers a popular low-code platform for building applications and automating sales, customer service and other workflows.

Two weeks into the role of vice president of global business partners, and despite restrictions due to the coronavirus crisis, Cazenave is leading a team that’s reformulating Pegasystems’ channel strategy to better engage partners using its technology as a platform for digital transformation and to help them penetrate new markets.

[Related: 15 Coolest Mobile App Development Platforms: 2019 Mobility 100]

“They have decided to invest in building a vibrant ecosystem that was going to get them to exponential growth,” Cazenave said.

“I thought I could add a lot of value,” she added.

When Cazenave was first offered an interview at Pegasystems, she had to do a Google search to find out what the company did. But after research and meetings, what she appreciated most was despite its longstanding business and roster of Fortune 500 clients, Pegasystems maintained an entrepreneurial culture and still had the potential to grow like a startup.

The opportunity reminded Cazenave of her days managing IBM’s security business, which she scaled from a Cambridge office neighboring the Pegasystems headquarters.

Pegasystems has a well-established ecosystem of systems integrators, including IBM’s consulting arm, she told CRN. In the nearly four decades since founded by Alan Trefler, who still runs the company as CEO, Pegasystems has built a reputation of excellence in delivery through those partners.

“We can grow that,” Cazenave said, adding the channel strategy her team is currently crafting will be ready in a couple months.

With Pegasystems platforms, partners can create and sell applications that implement end-to-end processes, and business users not adept at coding can make changes quickly as needed, she said.

It’s a “center-out strategy,” Cazenave said. Developers start with the business process, then deploy their solution across the many channels Pegasystems supports, from mobile devices to call centers to cloud.

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Drexel offers a number of education certification and degree programs that prepare students for formal teacher certification. Once a student has successfully completed their undegraduate course of study and all qualifying teacher certification exams required by the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE), Drexel recommends the student to the PDE for the appropriate teaching certificate.

Teaching Certification GPA Requirements

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Instructional I Certification

This initial certification qualifies a teacher to teach for a maximum of six years. The six years need not be continuous. To continue teaching after the six years are completed, the teacher must receive an Instructional II Certification.

Instructional II Certification

The Instructional II Certification is considered a permanent certification. A teacher applying for Instructional II Certification must have:

• Instructional I Certification
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To maintain Instructional I and Instructional II Certifications, the PDE requires a teacher to complete one of the following every five years:

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Note: For those working to acquire Instructional II Certification, the 24 semester credits or 36 quarter credits needed to apply for Instructional II may also count toward Act 48 requirements.

Download the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Frequently Asked Questions about Act 48 [PDF].