• Guru: A Modernization Experiment Using IBM Bob 2.0

  October 5, 2026 Dan Darnell and Eric Whitcomb

  The most common use case for business applications is the CRUD model. The Create, Read, Update, and Delete operations, performed against a business database, are found almost everywhere. Behind every fancy inquiry dashboard with all the graphical bling you can muster are a slew of tried and true so-called “maintenance programs” doing the heavy lifting over the data being presented. Whether it is back-office parameter tables, customer maintenance, or order entry applications, the CRUD model is fundamental. Most of us can whip out a simple green-screen maintenance program with our eyes closed in, oh, a couple hours or so, depending …

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• PHP’s Evolution On The IBM i Platform Continues

  September 28, 2026 Alex Woodie

  PHP was one of the first open source languages and runtimes to come to IBM i way back in the early 2000s. More than two decades later, open source is thriving on IBM i with hundreds of projects, while PHP is considered a hardened, enterprise-grade language for modern Web applications. This fall will see at least one new release of PHP coming to IBM i, version 8.6, and perhaps more.

  We are all indebted to the early backers of PHP on the IBM i platform, who saw the potential for the open-source project to evolve into the sturdy business language …

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• AI Is Not Just For Developers, It Is For Everyone At Your Company

  June 22, 2026 Alan Ashley

  I’m not a developer. Let me say that upfront, because it matters when I say the things I’m about to say. I’ve always had ideas that I could put forth to somebody who can code. But now, because of AI, I can ask it to do things that I can verbally explain, and it can create what I am asking for. That’s one of the reasons I’m so excited about GenAI.

  Before the GenAI boom started a few years ago, at ARCAD we had already gone down this road with a product called Discover. We had already tied chat into …

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• The Big Easy: Connecting The Dots On Big Blue’s AI Strategy For IBM i

  May 4, 2026 Alex Woodie

  IBM has not yet formally announced the new AI products that it is building for IBM i. We know about Bob and the MCP server, but there is a lot more AI stuff coming to IBM i. IBM shared details of what is coming in closed sessions at POWERUp in New Orleans last week, but hints about where it is going and what is coming were there, if you knew where to look.

  IBM i, as we all know, is a business platform. It runs enterprise applications and it runs them extremely well. If you want to model a nuclear …

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• Startup Seeks The “Golden Path” for IBM i Modernization

  April 13, 2026 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops looking for a partner to help with RPG modernization may want to check out Golden Path Digital. The startup recently announced a modernization initiative dubbed AS/Forward that includes a mix of code documentation and AI-powered code conversion tools, all wrapped up with professional services, to give IBM i shops a lifeline for aging RPG apps.

  Golden Path Digital was founded last year in Hot Springs Village, Arkansas, by two business partners, Aaron Balentine and Ty Woods. An AI engineer at a local lumber company that runs on the IBM i platform, Valentine is the technical one, while …

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• What IBM i Ideas Are Cooking In IBM’s Ideas Portal?

  March 30, 2026 Alex Woodie

  It is early spring, which means we are getting close to Technology Refresh (TR) time. What new functionality will IBM add to the IBM i operating system and related products? Nobody knows except IBM and its closest business partners, but we can get an idea of what might be cooking in the next IBM i TR by checking out the IBM Ideas Portal.

  The IBM Ideas Portal was implemented back in 2022 to replace the IBM Request for Enhancement (RFE) process, which IBM formalized with a Web-based voting and ranking system back in 2016. The Ideas Portal works as …

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• IBM Gets Bob 1.0 Off The Ground

  March 2, 2026 Alex Woodie

  IBM this month finally will get a coding co-pilot into the hands of its IBM i installed base with the launch of Bob. The general availability of Bob 1.0.0 on March 24 will mark the end of the long wait for IBM i customers – and in particular, the large population of RPG developers – to start using IBM-branded AI software to maintain and develop IBM i software.

  The world of generative AI moves quickly, as the large language models (LLMs) from frontier providers improve on a weekly, if not daily, basis. This is both exciting, as the capabilities of …

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• Skills Displaces Cybersecurity As Top Concern For IBM i Shops

  February 2, 2026 Alex Woodie

  Well, it was bound to happen eventually. After nine straight years as the top concern in the IBM i community, cybersecurity has finally fallen out of the number one position in Fortra’s annual IBM i Marketplace Survey. Taking its place atop the closely watched survey is IBM i skills, an issue that has been lurking in the background but now must be considered a priority for IBM i leaders.

  Fortra’s annual IBM i Marketplace Survey provides a broad barometer on what’s going on with the IBM i community. One of the most closely watched questions in the survey, …

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• Bob More Than Just A Code Assistant, IBM i Chief Architect Will Says

  December 1, 2025 Alex Woodie

  When IBM i professionals finally get their hands on Bob, the new AI-powered tool currently in development in Big Blue’s labs, they will find that it is much more than just a code assistant, IBM i chief Architect Steve Will said recently. “It has a lot of knowledge,” he said. “It knows things about IBM i.”

  While precise details about the timing of the release of Bob are slim, IBM is widely expected to release a public preview of the new AI-powered plug-in for VS Code in early 2026. The new software, which was unveiled in early October around the …

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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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