IBM i development teams are under increasing pressure to modernize applications faster while continuing to maintain the reliability and business value their organizations depend on. Many teams are balancing decades of RPG business logic, limited developer resources, growing skills gaps, and rising expectations for faster application delivery, all while trying to adopt modern development practices and AI-driven workflows. At the same time, organizations are looking for ways to improve developer productivity without introducing unnecessary risk or disrupting mission-critical applications. As AI adoption accelerates across the software industry, IBM i teams are increasingly seeking solutions that can help simplify modernization efforts while preserving the stability, security, and performance of their existing environments.
To help address these challenges, IBM is announcing the IBM Bob Premium Package for i, which builds on IBM Bob to provide IBM i clients with a tailored AI-powered development experience designed specifically for IBM i developers. Built to work directly with IBM i applications, RPG source code, and real system context, the Premium Package for i extends IBM Bob with advanced modernization, documentation, code generation, and testing capabilities tailored for enterprise IBM i development. The IBM Bob Premium Package for i is designed to help development teams modernize applications with greater speed, confidence, and consistency while preserving the business-critical logic that powers their organizations. By combining AI-driven assistance with IBM i-native workflows, Bob helps developers focus less on manual maintenance tasks and more on delivering innovation to the business.
AI Purpose-Built for IBM i
Unlike generic AI coding assistants, the IBM Bob Premium Package for i tailors the IBM Bob experience for IBM i development environments and workflows. The Premium Package for i provides IBM i-native capabilities that understand RPG application structure, IBM i development practices, and real-world modernization requirements. With direct IBM i connectivity, developers can interact with source members, generate and refactor RPG code, compile programs, and work within live application environments without relying on disconnected tools or manual copy-and-paste workflows. By grounding AI assistance in real application context, Bob helps developers receive more accurate explanations, cleaner outputs, and modernization guidance aligned with IBM i best practices. This allows teams to spend less time deciphering legacy applications and more time delivering innovation.
Accelerating RPG Modernization
The IBM Bob Premium Package for i introduces curated AI skills and agentic workflows optimized for common IBM i development and modernization tasks. These capabilities are designed to help developers work more efficiently while improving consistency, increasing accuracy, and optimizing token usage to reduce unnecessary AI consumption. With the Premium Package for i, developers can explain complex RPG logic in natural language, convert Fixed-Format RPG to modern Free-Format RPG, refactor monolithic programs into modular components, generate RPG, CL, and DDS code, automatically create technical documentation directly from source code, and generate unit tests to support modernization and code validation. By tailoring these skills and workflows for IBM i environments and development practices, the Premium Package for i helps teams achieve more predictable, repeatable, and higher-quality outcomes than with general-purpose AI tooling.
Supporting the Next Generation of IBM i Developers
As many organizations face IBM i skills shortages and workforce transitions, knowledge transfer and onboarding have become increasingly important. The Premium Package for i helps newer developers ramp up more quickly by making complex RPG applications easier to understand and document. Experienced developers benefit as well by reducing time spent on repetitive modernization and maintenance tasks, allowing them to focus on higher-value architecture and application innovation initiatives. By helping teams modernize incrementally instead of requiring large-scale rewrites, IBM Bob supports a practical and lower-risk approach to IBM i transformation.
Built for Modern IBM i Development
The IBM Bob Premium Package for i reflects our continued investment in helping IBM i clients adopt AI-assisted development workflows while preserving the stability, security, and business value of the platform. IBM Bob delivers AI-first and modern developer experiences designed to help teams accelerate application development, modernization, and innovation while the Premium Package for i brings those capabilities directly to IBM i environments with experiences tailored for IBM i developers. By providing context-aware assistance grounded in IBM i applications and development practices, Bob helps improve the relevance and accuracy of AI-generated outputs while giving teams greater confidence in modernization decisions. The Premium Package for i is designed to integrate naturally into existing IBM i workflows, bringing AI directly into the IBM i development experience rather than forcing teams to adapt to disconnected or generic tooling.
Coming June 24th
The IBM Bob Premium Package for i is planned to become Generally Available on June 24th, 2026. More information, including additional technical details and resources, will be shared as General Availability approaches. With the IBM Premium Package for i, IBM is helping development teams modernize RPG applications faster, improve developer productivity, accelerate onboarding, and bring AI-powered workflows to IBM i development, while maintaining the reliability and business logic organizations depend on every day. In the meantime before the General Availability of the Premium Package for i, get started with a Free Trial of IBM Bob here.