By Alex Woodie
Publication Date: 2026-10-05 04:05:00
October 5, 2026
Alex Woodie
Bob, the AI assistant developed by Big Blue for IBM i and other environments, is now available for deployment on-prem, IBM announced last week. The news is a boon for enterprises, government agencies, and other organizations that can’t risk sending sensitive data off site.
IBM announced Bob about a year ago to help with application development tasks, including understanding, explaining, generating, refactoring, transforming, and testing code. When Bob 1.0 launched in April, Bob supported IBM i-specific languages like RPG, CL, and DDS, as well as SQL and COBOL. However, it lacked a native connection to IBM i code residing on the IBM i, which limited its uptake.
When Bob 2.0 launched in June, it brought significant changes. For starters, it offered support for direct connections to IBM i-resident code, instead of having to download all your source…
