IBM Bob: What an Agentic AI Assistant Actually Changes for RPG Modernization
IBM Bob Premium Package for i reached general availability June 24, 2026. Here is what it actually does for legacy RPG codebases, and where the skill-gap problem still needs a human.
The problem Bob is aimed at
Most IBM i shops are sitting on production RPG applications written decades ago, often by developers who have since retired. Modernizing or even safely modifying that code requires specialized skills that are increasingly scarce in the labor market. That is a slow-moving but real risk to the installed base: the biggest long-term threat to IBM i is not a competing platform, it is attrition of the people who understand the applications.
IBM Bob Premium Package for i is IBM's agentic AI development assistant purpose-built for that specific problem, targeting the RPG-heavy codebases that make up the backbone of most IBM i shops.
What it actually does
IBM describes Bob as offering an agentic SDLC experience, meaning support across the full software development lifecycle rather than just code generation. In practice that includes:
- Reading and interpreting legacy RPG logic
- Tracing field- and data-level dependencies through old programs
- Generating documentation for code that was never documented
- Helping engineers make changes with more confidence about what else in the system a change might touch
The results IBM is citing so far
The strongest public number comes from an early adopter, Heartland Co-Op, which modernized grain-operations applications using IBM i and IBM Bob together and reported an estimated 60% faster ramp-up time for developers new to the platform when it comes to understanding complex existing applications.
Practitioner feedback echoes the same theme. Bob Richardson, an ERP Support Analyst at Wynne Systems, specifically praised the depth of Bob's project planning relative to other AI tools he had used: given the exact same prompt, Bob's planning was consistently more detailed than competing tools. That is a useful signal, but it is still early. Bob has one publicly cited case study and a handful of quotes, not an independent multi-year track record.
Where the hardware conversation connects
Bob is software, and it runs against your existing IBM i environment, not a specific machine. But IBM's own July 2026 announcement paired Bob's momentum with new hardware: the entry-tier Power S1112 (model numbers 9242-21B rack and 9242-21T tower), the first Power11 system available in IBM i Software Tier P05.
For shops that are both refreshing aging Power hardware and starting a Bob-driven modernization effort, that pairing is worth planning together rather than as two separate projects. See the <a href="/intelligence-reports/power11-versus-power10/">IBM Power11 versus Power10 buying decision</a> and the <a href="/articles/green-screen-modernization-roadmap/">green screen modernization roadmap</a> for the hardware and process sides of that planning.
What buyers should still ask
Bob lowers the floor of expertise required to safely touch old RPG, but it does not remove the need for review. Treat early adoption results as directional, not a guarantee, and pilot Bob against a bounded, well-understood piece of your codebase before trusting it with core transaction logic. The same governance discipline that applies to any AI tool touching production IBM i systems applies here: human review stays in the loop, especially for the first several modernization cycles.