Shaking The IBM i Magic Eight Ball For 2026

January 26, 2026 Alex Woodie

After one more trip around the Sun, the IBM i community is back at it for another turn. What will become of our favorite box in 2026, let alone the people who work on it? That is not easy to say. As the great ballplayer/philosopher Yogi Berra once said: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” But we try anyway.

We kick off 2026 IBM i predictions with some targeted insight from Bill Langston, director of marketing, New Generation Software:

“I feel like 2026 will be a quiet year with the most adventurous IBM i customers slowly moving ahead with AI and open source. It feels like there is a growing divide in the customer base with some moving forward while others continue to use IBM i more or less as they have for 25 years. Hopefully a new Power11 P05 model will arrive sometime to provide an upgrade path for small shops and developers who want an on premises server.”

Tom Huntington, executive vice president of technical solutions, Fortra, sees TPM in his Magic 8 Ball:

“IBM i education for team members will continue to be big focus as key employees retire in 2026. The COMMON user groups in USA, Europe, India and LATAM will see increased memberships as IBM and the partner community emphasis the need for new staff to replace the retirees. This surge in 2026 will change the face of many user groups across IBM i.

AI will help new and old employees to be more productive in learning and developing on IBM i. IBM’s efforts in Bob for AI and the modernization vendors will help to augment the staff shortage with AI delivering faster access to data for business decision making and will provide advancement in core applications that run on IBM i. By mid-year, Timothy Prickett Morgan will be writing RPG free format per Steve Will in the recent IBM i Marketplace Survey webinar.”

HA/DR will continue to be a topic for management teams as they are looking for easier to manage and less expensive solutions to provide the same coverage for disaster recovery readiness testing or actual disaster. Heightening worldwide tensions will force organizations that rely on IBM i to make sure these processes and procedures are seamless and repeatable around data recoverability and security.”

Patrick Staudaucher, managing partner of IBM i recruiting firm Talsco Inc., says the skills mix is changing:

1. AI Becomes a Core Career Skill on IBM i: In 2026, AI shifts from experimentation to expectation. Developers who use AI alongside APIs and modern open-source tools – for code understanding, documentation, testing, and problem-solving – will be more productive and marketable. We have spoken to countless RPG developers who have leveraged AI, all commenting how it has been a game changer in how they learn, and how quickly they have been able to reskill and ramp up to speed.
2. Modernization Leans into IBM i as the Core: Modernization will focus on strengthening IBM i as the system of record while extending it through APIs, open-source frameworks, and AI-enabled tools at the edges. This ‘build around, not replace’ model lowers risk, accelerates delivery, and creates modern development environments that attract and retain talent.
3. IBM i Hiring and Succession Planning Becomes a Security Issue: In 2026, IBM i staffing gaps will be viewed as a security and business continuity risk – but these risks often remain invisible until someone retires without proper succession planning. Overreliance on a few individuals, undocumented knowledge, and unclear succession plans expose organizations to disruption. The security risk isn’t always technical; it’s human. Hiring, cross-training, and modern tooling will become essential safeguards against operational risk.”

Floyd Del Muro, president of COMMON, has some wise words for the AI boom:

“I think Amara’s Law will be true in 2026 for AI. ‘We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.’ 2026 will be a year of over estimations of productivity and value but a needed maturity and learning year for the long term value of AI.”

Roger Pence, product evangelist, ASNA, isn’t afraid to dream big:

“As AI continues its push into the mainstream, the enterprise shifts its focus from marveling and salivating to focusing on tough questions about quality, reliability, and security. IBM i Project Bob (PBob) drags its feet on improving its docs and broken links. PBob remains beta-like for a frustratingly long time – but it continues to get talked about a _lot_. Bob price’s curve starts out crazy high and then starts to correct by the end of the year.

The job market gets tougher for young programmers – but not tough enough for them to write RPG for a living. As a result, RPG-focused shops continue their struggle for what to do about retiring RPG programmers.

MCP servers are already improving AI results. But, by the end of 2026, MCP servers and whatever follows will very much improve how programmers use AI.

Microsoft spends zillions putting AI features in Windows Paint that make it much easier to rotate images.”

Ash Giddings, product manager, Maxava, sees IBM i being impacted by external forces:

“Looking ahead to 2026, I expect to see a meaningful acceleration in adoption of IBM i 7.6, driven by necessity and not by customers purely looking to remain on a supported level of the operating system. Security expectations continue to harden, and the inclusion of integrated MFA will drive this as they actively look to reduce risk, comply with cyber insurance demands, and satisfy audit pressure.

At the same time, IBM i workloads are becoming more portable than at any point in the platform’s history. Whether driven by cost optimization, resilience, or corporate cloud mandates, more organizations will demonstrate the ability to move IBM i workloads between on-premise, private cloud, and public cloud environments with genuine operational confidence.

The most significant shift, however, will be in high availability and disaster recovery expectations. For years, too many organizations have been able to treat HA and DR as a compliance exercise, proving that data can be replicated while quietly hoping no one asks the harder questions. In 2026, that stops working. Regulators, boards, and insurers will increasingly demand proof that applications can be recovered and that the business can actually operate after an incident. Recovery time objectives will be measured in real live outcomes. This will force a move away from box-ticking architectures and solutions toward regularly tested, application-aware recovery strategies.

For the IBM i community, this is a challenging shift, but also a necessary one if the platform is to continue underpinning mission-critical workloads with credibility.”

Alex Roytman, CEO of Profound Logic, is actively working to empower IBM i professionals with AI:

“In 2026, a small number of forward-thinking IBM i companies will pull far ahead of the rest of the market. They won’t do it by replacing IBM i or hiring large teams. They’ll do it by fundamentally changing how development work gets done.

Most IBM i shops face the same constraint: small, aging development teams where a handful of senior developers carry the entire load. These experts handle everything – planning changes, running builds, fixing errors, testing results, writing documentation. Even with AI coding assistants, the work still happens one task at a time, with a developer watching every step. That’s about to change.

The companies that break away will stop treating AI as just a helper. They’ll deploy AI as an orchestration and execution layer – planning tasks, running jobs, catching and fixing failures, and validating results before a developer ever reviews the outcome. This shifts developers from doing the work to directing and approving it. Instead of the traditional one-developer-one-task model, a single developer becomes an orchestrator – overseeing multiple autonomous AI agents working in parallel across different tasks simultaneously.

For IBM i specifically, this matters because the expertise bottleneck is acute. The developers who understand RPG, COBOL, and the nuances of these systems are retiring faster than they can be replaced. Agentic coding doesn’t just speed up the work – it multiplies what each expert can accomplish.

The productivity gains are substantial. Teams adopting true agentic coding, not just AI assistants that suggest code snippets, are seeing 5X to 10X improvements over traditional development approaches. By the end of 2026, the gap will be visible. The IBM i companies that embrace this shift will operate at the same pace as the most modern development organizations anywhere. The opportunity is there for any team ready to rethink how the work gets done.”

Richard Dolewski, vice president of hybrid cloud solutions at Lightedge, sees IBM i adapting to larger IT trends:

“With numerous disruptive cloud outages in 2025, the industry will shift from traditional single cloud deployment models towards a reference architecture that distributes workloads across multiple providers combining private and public clouds with edge infrastructure. Expand upon the multicloud strategy by moving workloads into private (on-premises/dedicated) and public (AWS, Azure, GCP) clouds with edge computing. The outcome is a unified, flexible, and low-latency performance solution, allowing workloads and data to move seamlessly across environments. The design must be focused for resilience.

The 2026 landscape emphasizes a hybrid approach – leveraging systems like IBM i alongside public clouds–to modernize workflows through AI and machine learning.

AI Data Protection: Because AI data is scattered across various geographies and platforms, traditional protection must evolve. Organizations must implement strict policy controls to backup where the data resides, and determine what is exposed to AI agents securely.

Automation: Hybrid deployments now incorporate automated governance and observability to manage the security of AI-driven workflows.

Regulatory Compliance: As infrastructure resiliency becomes a business imperative, regulations are evolving to mandate these higher standards of availability and data restoration.”

Pete Massiello, lifetime IBM Champion for Power, is an optimist when it comes to IBM i and IBM i professionals:

“I think 2026 is going to be a big year for the IBM i community. We finally get the low-end Power11 box, which will be a boom for all the P05 software tier clients. Many customers have Power9 and Power10 boxes that they wish to upgrade to, but they currently is no upgrade path so when IBM releases the new S1112 machine, I predict there is going to be quite a pent up demand that these customers to upgrade to a Power 11. The newer servers are in a better position to take advantage of AI as they’ll be so much more CPW able to be consumed.

Of course, the other big thing is AI and how that plays into the average IBM i shop. The more progressive companies will embrace project Bob at a very fast pace. It’ll be interesting how that next level of customers embraces the technology. Project Bob powered by Anthropic is certainly a leader in the field so IBM has produced yet again the best technology. What will the uptake be for the average customer and how they integrated into their workforce, their applications, and their peoples skills will be the biggest question of 2026. I think it’s a good time to look at your workforce and bring in some younger talent. Who’s more proficient with AI and working together with your existing staff will be a better way to get customers up to speed quicker.”

Peg Tuttle, host of The Incredible i Show, says the IBM i will finally get its due:

“IBM i Branding Gets Louder: The IBM i community is finding its voice. In 2026, expect a surge in ecosystem-driven messaging aimed at reframing IBM i as the modern, secure, and mission-critical platform it truly is. From user groups and podcasts to partner campaigns and IBM itself, the drumbeat is growing louder – and the audience is starting to listen.

App Modernization Gets Practical: The days of ‘rip and replace’ are over. In 2026, smart shops are embracing practical modernization – wrapping, extending, and integrating their IBM i applications with modern UIs, APIs, and cloud services. IBM’s Bob initiative is also gaining traction, helping developers modernize with built-in AI and automation that make real transformation possible without losing stability.

AI Becomes Embedded AI is no longer just a buzzword – it’s becoming embedded in the day-to-day IBM i experience. Whether through intelligent code suggestions, automated documentation, or system performance insights, AI is now a tool within the platform. This shift will drive productivity gains and open up new use cases across development and operations.”

Christopher Burns, senior consultant, Tri-Delta Resources, has faith in the power of cooperation.

“I predict that privately owned mom and pop shops who have been operating splendidly on standalone Power9 hardware for years, are now facing EOS, and who have also experienced sticker shock when exploring the idea of migrating to the cloud, may partner with other mom and pop shops in the same predicament, to form non-profit hosting cooperatives. This would involve sharing costs based on the level of resources required for their specific line of business applications. At the center of these cooperatives would be Power11 hardware in one of the shops or in a data center, carved up into client LPAR’s, each managed by its own shop.

Considering how much power is packed into the Power11 family (including the upcoming models not yet announced), and also considering that most mom and pop shops have been consuming only a small portion of their Power9 resources, it seems inevitable that the corner grocer, the independent insurance agent, the local butcher, baker and candlestick maker would scribble this idea on a cocktail napkin as they gather at the local watering hole one night after work. We’ll see.

Just don’t ask me who’s gonna win the Masters in April.”

We wouldn’t think of doing that, Chris.