Power Autonomous Operations
Power Autonomous Operations is IBM's AI agent for the Power systems underneath IBM i. It monitors, diagnoses and resolves capacity issues. GA September 23, 2026.
What the agent does
It runs the Power hardware underneath IBM i, not your applications. You drive it with chat-style prompts, which is IBM's answer to shops that cannot keep a full-time Power specialist on staff.
- WatchMonitors how the Power system is behaving.
- CollectTakes in alerts.
- DiagnoseRuns AI-driven analysis to find the cause.
- RecommendSuggests a fix. A person approves it before anything changes.
IBM's one measured result
Minutes to detect and fix one capacity problem
IBM internal test across eleven Power systems, one fault class. This is the source of IBM's "up to 15x" claim, not a general benchmark.
What IBM has not published yet
As of September 2, 2026 IBM had not said:
- How it is licensed
- How it connects to tools such as the HMC or PowerVC
- How its audit trail works
- Whether it acts differently on IBM i, AIX and Linux partitions
How it differs from IBM Bob
IBM Bob writes and modernizes code. Power Autonomous Operations runs the infrastructure. It also carries no watsonx branding.
Related Terms
IBM Bob (Project Bob)
IBM's generally available AI coding agent for IBM i, built as a fork of Visual Studio Code and tuned for RPG, CL, DDS, and SQL. Reached GA on March 24, 2026; Bob 2.0 and the IBM i-specific Bob Premium Package for i shipped June 24, 2026.
IBM i
IBM's operating system for Power servers running traditional AS/400-lineage business applications, with Db2 for i built directly into the OS.
watsonx Orchestrate
IBM's AI agent and automation platform for orchestrating multi-step business workflows across enterprise applications. Since August 2026 it can launch IBM Bob from its Create an agent dialog through a Build with Bob preview, but it still ships no IBM i or Db2 for i connector.