– The latest IBM Bob updates help companies quickly deliver production-ready software
– IBM Bob is designed to optimize the cost of AI-driven development beyond the model
– IBM Bob now offers pre-built, customizable enterprise workflows for IBM Z, IBM i and Java Modernization
July 9, 2026
ARMONK, NY, July 9, 2026 – Today IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced important updates for IBM Bobits agent software development platform, including new multi-agent capabilities, integrated AI cost and usage analysis, and pre-built, specialized workflows for modernizing corporate systems.
As companies now use AI to write massive amounts of code, their software development challenges have shifted to other parts of the process. 85% of DevSecOps professionals surveyed agree that AI has shifted the bottleneck from writing code to reviewing and validating it[1]. IBM Bob is designed to deliver AI capabilities wherever software engineering work takes place. Rather than limiting AI to a single development interface for isolated tasks, Bob provides a unified foundation for teams to coordinate across the entire software development lifecycle.
For example, engineers at Jack Henry, a leading provider of financial services and banking technology, faced the challenge of maintaining and evolving a large RPG codebase as its application portfolio grew larger and more complex. “With IBM Bob,” explains Kevin Sligar, chief technical architect at Jack Henry“Our developers are able to accelerate RPG development workflows, improve code quality, and gain deeper insights into decades of accumulated system knowledge while increasing efficiency in improvement efforts.”
Many business engineers manually select models and try to balance cost and performance, but still receive inconsistent results and unpredictable output. Bob can now optimize the entire execution system, not just model selection. Bob assigns models to tasks, coordinates AI execution across agents, and provides enterprises with visibility into productivity, quality, performance, and cost through the newly launched Bobalytics to help companies optimize AI at scale.
“Bob is the platform that enterprise customers have been asking for,” he said Neel Sundaresan, GM, Automation and AI, IBM. “The benchmark for enterprise AI is no longer a better coding wizard. It’s an end-to-end agent development partner, working across all systems development teams already in use, with the governance, security and cost controls that enterprises need. We built Bob to solve the problems that enterprises actually face, and the updates we’re announcing today are the foundation for everything that comes next.”
Development teams also face unique challenges as they move beyond code generation to apply AI to larger, more complex work, such as updating legacy applications or modernizing IBM Z, IBM i, and Java environments.
Blue Pearl, a cloud solutions and consulting services company, has successfully used IBM Bob for these types of complex projects. “We introduced IBM Bob to a legacy modernization program. Originally, it was a nine-month, 14-engineer project that could be completed in just three days,” he said Saireshan Govender, Group CEO of Blue Pearl. “The most compelling result wasn’t the speed – it was the combination of operational efficiency, cost optimization and real results that we could trust and build on.”
AI results can vary depending on the nature of the work, which can cause significant problems in such high-risk, multi-stage projects. Structured, repeatable workflows help reduce this variability so teams can deliver reliable, verifiable results at the enterprise level.
IBM Bob now has pre-built workflows that teams can customize and extend for their own environments, ensuring results are consistent and auditable, regardless of who runs them. The IBM Bob Premium Packages for IBM Z, IBM i, and Java Modernization are each custom-built workflows based on IBM’s decades of domain experience, optimizing AI for enterprise teams that need to deliver comprehensive modernization.
What’s new with IBM Bob?:
- Integrated usage transparency and cost optimization: Users can now access Bobalytics, a new feature that helps them monitor consumption, allocate resources, and stay on top of things so they can scale AI to their internal specifications.
- Parallel, model-native tool call: Bob now allows models to request multiple tools in one go and execute them together.
- Subagents manage context at scale: Every exploratory step an AI takes, whether it’s file reads, searches, or function traces, can bloat the context window and drive up costs. Now Bob subagents perform complex work in an isolated context to deliver fast responses while controlling costs.
The latest version of IBM Bob is available for download at bob.ibm.com/download. For more information about the new features and functionality, please visit:
Now available: IBM Bob Premium packages
IBM has been at the heart of enterprise modernization for decades on mainframes, IBM i systems and Java codebases that power global enterprises. Bob’s first three premium packages translate IBM’s institutional knowledge into AI-native workflows that are structured, repeatable, auditable, and designed specifically for the environments other tools were not designed for.
Premium packages now available include:
- IBM Z: Mainframe environments are at the heart of global banking, insurance and commerce and have historically been the hardest places for AI to help. Bob is now addressing this problem by bringing AI-native application modernization to IBM Z for the first time with COBOL and PL/I modernization and JCL analysis. For more information about the IBM Z Premium package, see:
- IBM i: IBM i has been supporting mission-critical operations in organizations around the world for decades. Bob brings AI-native development to these environments for the first time, with remote file system integration, IBM i-specific modes and tools, and workflows based on IBM i shop operating patterns. For more information about the IBMI i Premium package, see:
- Java modernization: Enterprise Java portfolios continue to be one of the largest and most complex modernization challenges in today’s software landscape. Bob delivers AI-driven workflows for Java modernization, including migration to Java 25, large-scale refactoring, and dependency analysis at scale, in a structured and repeatable manner. For more information about the Java Modernization Premium package, see:
About IBM
IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI and consulting expertise. We help customers in more than 175 countries leverage insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain a competitive advantage in their industries. Thousands of governments and companies in critical infrastructure sectors such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM and Red Hat OpenShift’s hybrid cloud platform to deliver their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s groundbreaking innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting provide our customers with open and flexible options. All of this is supported by IBM’s long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, accountability, inclusivity and service. For more information, visit www.ibm.com.
Rebecca Neufeld
IBM
rebecca.neufeld@ibm.com
[1] GitLab. (2026). The AI Accountability Report 2026.
https://newsroom.ibm.com/2026-07-09-ibm-advances-enterprise-ai-software-development-with-multi-agent-capabilities-and-specialized-modernization-workflows
