Steve Will Archives

Welcoming The New IBM i Chief Architect And Other New Top Brass

August 3, 2026 Alex Woodie

As you have likely already heard, IBM i Chief Architect Steve Will retired last week after a 41-year IBM career, and was succeeded in that role by Kris Whitney, who previously was the IBM i platform’s chief engineer. But this is just one change among several in IBM i leadership in recent months.

For the past four years, Will officially had three roles at IBM, including chief architect for IBM i, IBM i chief technology officer, and IBM Distinguished Engineer. The last two titles, which Will gained in 2022, were significant at the time as they denoted Will’s position …
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IBM Developing AI Coding Assistant for IBM i

May 22, 2024 Alex Woodie

During his keynote presentation at the POWERUp 2024 conference Monday, IBM i CTO Steve Will announced that IBM is actively exploring ways to incorporate generative AI into the IBM i platform. The most promising of three individual but related projects is a plan to build a large language model (LLM)-powered coding assistant for IBM i that will initially provide three functions to support RPG development, with more expected in the future.

The genesis of the coding assisting project for RPG, which doesn’t have a name yet, can be traced to last year’s launch of watsonx Code Assistant for Z, which …
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2024 IBM i Predictions, Part Deux

January 22, 2024 Alex Woodie

How will 2024 unfold? Nobody knows the answer to that. But that’s not stopping members of the IBM i community from taking some swings. It’s not only a good Bayesian exercise to think through the probabilities of what may occur, but it’s often a bit of fun, too.

Our second batch of 2024 predictions starts with IBM distinguished engineer Steve Will, who, as the IBM i chief technology officer and IBM i chief architect, doesn’t need to guess where the platform is going, since he’s literally leading the creation of it. Instead, his prediction focuses on the community.

“2024 will …
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IBM i Chief Architect Will Gives N2i Some Platform Pointers

January 10, 2024 Alex Woodie

It’s hard to find someone more knowledgeable about the ins and outs of the IBM i platform than Steve Will, who holds CTO and chief architect titles at IBM. So when Will accepted an invitation from COMMON’s N2i (New to IBM i) group to speak to IBM i newcomers this week, it was a good chance to pick up something new.

One of the first things that IBM i newcomers will notice about the IBM i is that it’s an unusual platform, in several regards. For starters, it’s older than many platforms, being able to trace its lineage back to …
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Why Steve Will’s Promotions Are A Big Deal For IBM i

June 6, 2022 Alex Woodie

As chief architect for IBM i, Steve Will has long been the recognizable face of the IBM i development team in Rochester, Minnesota. Recently, he added two more titles to his cv, including IBM i CTO and distinguished engineer. While the labels are certainly good for Will and an acknowledgment of his hard work, they’re also good for IBM i and bode well for the future of the platform.

A year after earning a master’s degree in computer science at Purdue University in 1984, Will joined IBM and immediately went to work on the IBM midrange line, first as a …
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Welcoming The New IBM i Chief Architect And Other New Top Brass

IBM Developing AI Coding Assistant for IBM i

2024 IBM i Predictions, Part Deux

IBM i Chief Architect Will Gives N2i Some Platform Pointers

Why Steve Will’s Promotions Are A Big Deal For IBM i

Content archive

Recent Posts

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