Talsco Weekly: How IBM i is Redefining Enterprise AI

Welcome to another edition of Talsco Weekly

IBM i Brief: 🤖 IBM killed Watson Code Assist. Meet the AI that replaced it. 🖥️ IBM i shops are stuck in a Power hardware no man's land. 💾 IBM Power memory and flash prices surge.
AI: 💻 IBM killed Watson Code Assist. Meet the AI that replaced it. 🏛️ IBM just redefined what "sovereign" means for on-prem AI.
Career: 🔥 Everyone's afraid AI will kill developer jobs. They're wrong.
Development: 🔧 Michelle Lyons and Patrick Behr demonstrated how n8n orchestrates IBM i workflows — no RPG rewrite required. 🌐 WordPress installation on IBM i.
Database: 🔍 SYSFUNCS simplifies finding IBM i Table functions.
Hiring: ☑️ AI doesn't make IBM i talent less important. It makes the right talent critical.
Leadership: 👔 A new leadership style drives talent retention.
Learning: 🎓 AI is a brilliant mentor. It's not a training program.
Trends: 🏛️ 5 things Steve Will said at iCon that every IBM i shop needs to hear about the future.

IBM i Brief

🤖 IBM killed Watson Code Assist. Meet the AI that replaced it.

IBM's Project Bob — introduced at iCON (WMCPA) by Tim Rowe — is a purpose-built AI development partner for IBM i, natively fluent in RPG, CL, and everything IBM i.

It runs inside a Bob-enhanced VS Code workspace, connects to IBM's cloud to select the right LLM for each task, and keeps your code, data, and IP fully secured within IBM's environment.

The developer stays in control — Bob proposes, you approve. Plans range from Free to Enterprise, with IBM i-native connectivity in the premium tier. Launch date: March 24th, 2026.

See AI below for more analysis.

🖥️ IBM i shops are stuck in a Power hardware no man's land

Power9 machines are now legacy. Power10 withdraws from market in July. And the rumored Power11 entry-level server, the S1112, is nowhere to be found.

IBM i users running smaller P05/P10 shops have three choices: grab remaining Power10 stock, bridge to PowerVS in the cloud, or wait and hope for a POWERUp 2026 announcement in New Orleans this April.

💾 IBM Power memory and flash prices surge

IBM is hiking memory prices 55% and flash storage up to 145% on Power Systems, effective April 1. Hyperscalers hoarding DRAM and SSDs for AI buildouts are squeezing everyone else. IBM's proprietary memory architecture means no alternatives exist.

More increases may follow in H2 2026. The window to buy at current prices is closing fast. Act now, or pay more later.

This supply shock isn't happening in isolation — it's part of a broader shift reshaping IT infrastructure decisions across the industry.

Why Memory Prices Are Surging — and Why IBM i Shops Are Paying the Price

The short answer: AI ate the memory market.

What began as an AI infrastructure boom has rippled outward, tightening memory supply and inflating prices. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have pivoted their limited cleanroom space toward higher-margin AI components. Every wafer allocated to an AI accelerator is a wafer denied to enterprise servers and everything else.

The implications go deeper than a hardware bill.

This is also a talent story. Think about it.

Senior IBM i professionals who managed through prior hardware cycles are retiring. The institutional knowledge of when to buy, how much to buy, and how to plan capacity is walking out the door.

AI

💻 IBM killed Watson Code Assist. Meet the AI that replaced it.

Last September, IBM was on track to launch Watson Code Assist for i. Ahead of the launch, Tim Rowe's team at IBM got early access to Project Bob. They tested it.

"The stuff that Bob could do was better than what we had built."

Watson Code Assist: terminated. IBM is now, in Tim's words, "on the Bob bandwagon."

IBM doesn't scrap its own roadmap lightly. This should tell you something. I was in the room at iCON when Tim said it. The audience wasn't just politely attentive. Developers at every career stage were leaning in. One senior developer — 25+ years writing RPG — said it after the session:

This brings excitement back to coding — the kind I had when I started.

That's not a feature. That's a shift.

So what is Bob?

It's not an LLM. It uses many LLMs. IBM evaluates which model handles each task best — balancing performance, cost, and security — and Bob routes accordingly. You don't manage the model. IBM does. And Bob gets updated continuously. The plan you're on doesn't change what Bob can do. Bob is Bob.

The architecture is clean: a Bob-enhanced VS Code workspace on your desktop connects to IBM's cloud, Bob does the work, then comes back to you for approval before anything executes. Human in the loop. Always.

That matters. Generic AI on the IBM i isn't just unhelpful — it introduces real risk. Enterprise environments, regulatory requirements, decades of business logic embedded in programs nobody has fully documented in years. The wrong tool doesn't just slow you down. It creates exposure.

Bob was built for exactly this environment. Security and encryption baked in. Session data cleared on close. Your code, your data, your IP — it stays yours.

And Bob is genuinely good at RPG, CL, and everything native. Not as an afterthought. As the core design intent.

The use cases go further than most expect.

One customer is running Bob on a field-level expansion project — 37,000 lines. Bob works in chunks, building design documentation along the way. Another is using it to understand programs nobody remembers writing. Bob captures institutional knowledge. It helps plan penetration tests. It asks you questions — "How can I make this program better?" — rather than just executing commands.

Bob is built on agentic architecture and supports MCP servers. Have one? Bob uses it. Want to build one? Bob helps you build it. Create custom commands for tasks you repeat. The more context you give Bob, the better the output.

This is the force multiplier — not just for developers, but for DevOps, architects, and the CTOs making platform decisions.

On-prem is on the roadmap.

If you write RPG for a living, Bob was built for you.

🏛️ IBM just redefined what "sovereign" means for on-prem AI

In January, IBM announced Sovereign Core — software built on the premise that sovereignty isn't a contract, it's an architecture.

AI inference runs locally. Encryption keys stay inside your walls. Compliance evidence is generated continuously, not scrambled together before an audit. The control plane is yours. No exceptions.

The driver? AI changed the question. It's no longer just where is my data? It's *who governs the model? Who audits the decision?* Regulations are forcing enterprises to answer both.

For IBM i shops already running mission-critical workloads on-prem, this isn't a new concept — it's validation.

You've been sovereign all along.

Career

🔥 Everyone's afraid AI will kill developer jobs. They're wrong.

The fear is loud. But the data tells a different story.

Every major platform shift — the internet, mobile, cloud — didn't eliminate developers. It created more of them.

AI is no different. It's a multiplier, not a guillotine.

Stack Overflow's CEO puts it simply:

there are an infinite number of things to build.

And as we commonly know, as IBM i-ers, it comes down to “Systems Thinking”, and the need for:

People who understand computer science fundamentals and how to work with AI tools. Legacy systems need integration with AI capabilities—a systems integration challenge. New systems must be built for reliability, security, and scale; these fundamentals remain unchanged.

This article is worth your full read. The IBM i developer who leans in wins. The one who waits it out? Different story.

Development

🔧 Michelle Lyons and Patrick Behr demonstrated how n8n orchestrates IBM i workflows — no RPG rewrite required

At iCON, Michelle Lyons (imPower Technologies) and Patrick Behr walked through a proof-of-concept that bridges legacy IBM i systems with modern automation — using n8n, an open-source workflow tool built for developers who need more control than Zapier offers.

The demo was simple but revealing: an order comes in, triggers a SQL event on IBM i, routes through n8n for invoice approval logic, then updates the RPG-side database. No middleware bloat. No vendor lock-in.

Just clean integration between APIs, JSON payloads, and existing business logic. n8n runs self-hosted or in the cloud. It's low-code when you want speed, full-code when you need precision.

For IBM i shops looking to modernize workflows without ripping out decades of stable RPG, this is the kind of tooling that actually fits.

🌐 WordPress installation on IBM i

Here is a tutorial walks through setting up a WordPress website directly on IBM i systems, demonstrating how the platform can host modern web applications.

This short tutorial covers prerequisites, installation steps, and configuration details needed to get WordPress running.

It proves IBM i's versatility beyond traditional business applications, showing it can serve as a capable web server. This modernization approach helps organizations consolidate infrastructure while leveraging existing IBM i investments.

Database

🔍 SYSFUNCS simplifies finding IBM i Table functions

Instead of using OBJECT_STATISTICS with wildcards that return too many results, developers can query the SYSFUNCS SQL

View to list only Table functions by filtering FUNCTION_TYPE = 'T'.

This approach cleanly identifies Audit Journal Table functions in SYSTOOLS and verifies new functions added in recent releases, making SQL exploration more precise and efficient.

Hiring

☑️ AI doesn't make IBM i talent less important. It makes the right talent critical.

Here's the paradox nobody is talking about.

The more AI can do, the more it matters who is directing it.

We've written about Project Bob and IBM's agentic AI vision for IBM i. The tools are getting smarter. The automation is real.

And yet. A force multiplier only works if someone is holding it.

Bob can plan, code, debug, compile, and document. What it cannot do is understand your business. Carry the institutional knowledge that built your systems. Know when the AI is right — and when it isn't.

That's the human. That's your IBM i talent.

Steve Will said it at iCON — IBM i skills are now the community's number one concern. Not cybersecurity. Not AI. Skills. For the first time ever. In the same year purpose-built AI tools for IBM i are going live.

That's not a coincidence. That's a warning.

AI raises the ceiling. It does not lower the bar for the humans at the top.

Let's talk about your IBM i team. →

Leadership

👔 A new leadership style drives talent retention

Organizations are shifting toward "servant leadership," where leaders prioritize employee growth and well-being over traditional hierarchical control.

This approach fosters trust, autonomy, and purpose-driven work environments. Companies adopting this model report higher engagement, reduced turnover, and stronger attraction of top talent.

As workplace expectations evolve, leaders who empower rather than command are becoming essential to competitive advantage in today's talent market.

Learning

🎓 AI is a brilliant mentor. It's not a training program.

Everyone's talking about what AI can do for RPG developers. The results are real — junior devs get answers faster, senior devs move quicker. AI is one of the most accessible coding resources the IBM i community has ever seen.

But here's the disconnect.

A tool that answers questions isn't the same as a program that builds judgment. Knowing what the code does is different from knowing why it was written that way — and what happens when it breaks at 2am on a Monday.

That kind of knowledge isn't generated. It's transferred. Human to human. Senior to junior. Mentor to student.

Jim Buck has been doing exactly that for 35 years. His imPower Technologies courses — from ILE RPG to SQL to Modern Dev Tools — take developers with little or no IBM i experience and build real competency. Fast. AI can't replicate that. It can accelerate it.

The IBM i shops that get this right will use both. The ones that don't will find out the hard way — when their senior RPG developer retires and nobody's ready.

Trends

🏛️ 5 things Steve Will said at iCON that every IBM i shop needs to hear about the future

I was in the room at iCON when IBM i Chief Architect Steve Will took the stage. Here's what stood out.

1. IBM i skills just became the community's number one concern.

For the first time ever. Not cybersecurity. Not AI. Skills. That shift tells you something real about where the platform is heading — and how urgently organizations need to think about the next generation of IBM i talent.

2. IBM is investing in all five top concerns in 2026.

Skills, cybersecurity, app modernization, high availability, AI. Steve was direct: IBM is not picking favorites. All five are getting attention this year. That's not a talking point. That's a roadmap signal.

3. IBM i was built for agentic AI before agentic AI existed.

Integrated OS, Db2, SQL services, role-based security. That's the architecture AI agents need to interact with a system intelligently and safely. Steve's point was clear — IBM i shops aren't behind on AI. In many ways, they're already positioned for it. They just need to see it that way.

4. Zero downtime is now a hardware-level commitment.

IBM is working with the Power team — Power11 — to build zero downtime from the ground up. Not a patch. Not a workaround. A foundational design goal.

5. If you're an ISV thinking about leaving IBM i — IBM has a message for you.

Partners who move off the platform move out of IBM's partner program. IBM is playing a long game and wants partners who are too.

The platform isn't standing still. Are you?

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