Project Bob Archives

EvolveWare Makes Progress With RPG Code Modernization Using AI

November 3, 2025 Alex Woodie

IBM i shops that are looking for a partner to help them modernize RPG using AI have a number of companies to choose from, including IBM, which unveiled Project Bob last month. Another company to keep in mind is EvolveWare, which recently released its RPG code understanding tool and has plans to release a code generation product for RPG based on large language models (LLMs) in 2026.

EvolveWare has been treading the code modernization waters since it was founded by chief executive officer Miten Marfatia in Santa Clara, California, back in 2001. The company has primarily been involved in COBOL …
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Beta Of MCP Server Opens Up IBM i For Agentic AI

October 27, 2025 Alex Woodie

When Anthropic quietly released Model Context Protocol (MCP) in November 2024, it didn’t garner a whole lot attention. But as the agentic AI wave grew in early 2025, the protocol suddenly was hailed as the new standard for integrating AI applications, tools, and data sources. A good indication of just how far MCP has come is the fact that IBM released an early version of the MCP server for IBM i this month.

Project Bob got the big headlines at the IBM TechXchange conference, which took place the second week of October in Orlando, Florida. And for good reason, as …
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IBM Pulls The Curtain Back A Smidge On Project Bob

October 20, 2025 Alex Woodie

We learned last week that Project Bob is in at IBM, and Watson Code Assist for IBM i is out. IBM is gung-ho about the prospects for Bob to function as a do-it-all, AI-powered junior programmer for all of its platforms. But what exactly does this entail for IBM i customers? IT Jungle talked to IBM i chief architect Steve Will to get some answers.

When IBM eventually ships the AI code assistant that is currently called Project Bob, it will offer a range of AI-powered functionality for all IBM customers, including IBM i shops, mainframe customers, and Linux and …
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IBM Just Killed Merlin. Here’s Why

October 20, 2025 Alex Woodie

The writing had been on the wall for some time, and IBM finally made it official as part of the Technology Refresh for IBM i on October 7. That was when Big Blue announced the immediate withdrawal from marketing and service for its Modernization Engine for Lifecycle Integration product, commonly called Merlin. It will likely go down in IBM i history as a well-intentioned product that got some things right, but which ultimately could not overcome its flaws.

The introduction of Merlin back in May 2022 represented a sizable shift in IBM’s approach to application development on IBM i. Prior …
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A Bit More Insight Into IBM’s “Spyre” AI Accelerator For Power

October 20, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

If anything is clear right now, it is that Nvidia does not need to get any richer in the GenAI revolution, and neither does its foundry partner, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. But everyone else, including IBM and specifically its Power Systems business, desperately needs to do something to catch the GenAI wave and make some money in this once-in-a-millennia opportunity.

Our thesis, as you well know, is that for IBM i shops, code assistants that can help document, update, modernize, or port RPG and COBOL application code to newer languages and modular programming techniques is the killer app for GenAI, …
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Big Blue Converges IBM i RPG And System Z COBOL Code Assistants Into “Project Bob”

October 13, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

We have been anticipating the rollout of the Watsonx Code Assistant for RPG on the IBM i platform ever since IBM previewed a code assistant for the System z mainframe platform in August 2023 to help COBOL shops port their applications to Java on the mainframe. And lo and behold, the Rochester team followed suit, but with a slightly different approach, creating a Watsonx Code Assistant for RPG, which was also created using IBM’s homegrown “Granite” large language models.

Well, apparently, forget all of that. At the TechExchange 2025 developer conference last week, IBM was showing off a new, unified …
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EvolveWare Makes Progress With RPG Code Modernization Using AI

Beta Of MCP Server Opens Up IBM i For Agentic AI

IBM Pulls The Curtain Back A Smidge On Project Bob

IBM Just Killed Merlin. Here’s Why

A Bit More Insight Into IBM’s “Spyre” AI Accelerator For Power

Big Blue Converges IBM i RPG And System Z COBOL Code Assistants Into “Project Bob”

Content archive

Recent Posts

Subscribe

Pages

Search