IBM Bob for IBM i | Northdoor

IBM i environments power some of the world’s most critical business operations — financial services, logistics, distribution, manufacturing. Yet the platform faces a growing talent crisis: senior RPG expertise is retiring, institutional knowledge is undocumented, and maintenance backlogs are expanding faster than teams can absorb them. IBM Bob is the purpose-built AI development partner that solves this.

Understand

New hires gasp complex legacy systems in hours, not months.

Document

Auto-generate docs and diagrams that perserver institutional knowledge.

Refractor

Safe, repeatable code modernisation across your full portfolio

Why IBM Bob?

Generic AI tools do not understand IBM i. They lack awareness of RPG architecture, dependency chains, or CL/DDS constructs — creating as many problems as they solve.

IBM Bob is different. Trained specifically for IBM i and fluent in RPG II, RPG III, RPG ILE, CL, DDS, SQL and COBOL, Bob integrates directly into your development environment with governance baked in from day one.

“What had taken a senior developer six hours, I was able to accomplish 18x faster.”

Jasmine Kaczmarek, VP Technology, M.R. Williams

IBM Bob speaks your language

✓ RPG II / III / ILE Full fluency across all generations

✓ CL & DDS Control language and data structures understood natively

✓ SQL & COBOL Embedded SQL migration and COBOL modernisation

✓ Dependency Mapping Auto-resolved copybooks, call chains, and file structures

✓ Governance Built-in Human approval gates, full audit trail in your existing tools

~60,000

IBM developers using Bob globally

~65%

Sustained daily active usage rate

~45%

Average developer productivity improvement

Northdoor IBM i Services. All powered by IBM Bob

A structured set of six services Northdoor can deliver to your organisation, built on IBM Bob’s proven capabilities and our deep IBM POWER i expertise.

01 Legacy Code Analysis & Documentation

Explain and document RPG II, III, ILE, CL, DDS and COBOL programs
Extract embedded business rules from undocumented legacy code
Generate visual Mermaid flow diagrams for stakeholder review
Reduce dependency on tribal knowledge and key-person risk

02 IBM i Modernisation Delivery

Convert fixed-format RPG to free-format ILE RPG at scale
Migrate embedded SQL for improved performance and maintainability
Modularise monolithic programs using repeatable, safe patterns
Execute phased modernisation without disrupting production systems

03 Developer Productivity Acceleration

Onboard new IBM i developers in hours, not months
AI-assisted code generation for new procedures and applications
Reduce change-cycle defect rates with context-aware code review
Scale senior knowledge across junior team members

04 Quality Assurance & Testing

Auto-generate unit tests using RPGUNIT and IBM i frameworks
Identify risky dependencies before code is promoted to production
Reduce regression risk across change cycles
Build reusable test suites for long-running mission-critical programs

05 Governance, Audit & Compliance

Implement human approval gating on all AI-generated changes
Maintain full audit trails integrated with your existing toolchain
Ensure transparent, explainable AI actions at every development step.
Support regulatory and internal compliance requirements for code change

06 IBM i DevOps Enablement

Integrate Bob into CI/CD pipelines for automated build and deploy
PR review automation and deployment monitoring for IBM i
Enable modern DevOps culture without abandoning IBM i infrastructure
Reduce time-to-value for new features and change requests

Ready to modernise your IBM i estate?

Contact Northdoor for a no-obligation IBM i assessment and IBM Bob demonstration.

Get in touch

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