Bringing Agentic AI to COBOL and the Mainframe with Rich Larin

Recorded at IBM TechXchange 2026, RedMonk's Kate Holterhoff speaks with Rich Larin, IBM's Director of Z DevX & Platform Engineering, about bringing agentic AI tools to mainframe developers. Larin describes how Bob and the Premium Package for Z let COBOL teams use the same agentic IDE as other developers, with deployment options including SaaS, hybrid and air-gapped on-prem, plus Z code scan for deterministic security checks that Bob can remediate automatically and a data dictionary that captures experts' knowledge. He advises trying a proof of concept and hints at upcoming releases combining AI with analysis of very large applications.