The Managed Way to Run IBM Bob

Generative AI has landed in the development team, whether IT signed off on it or not. Engineers are already using assistants to speed up code reviews, refactor legacy systems and chase down technical debt. The tools work. The problem is what happens next: consumption that nobody is tracking, support cases that sit in a queue, and no one person accountable for keeping the whole thing governed and running.

That's the gap Celerity built our managed services for IBM Bob to close.

Celerity's IBM Bob Managed Service is a managed service for IBM Bob, IBM's generative AI assistant for development teams. Rather than handing you a licence and leaving you to work out deployment, consumption control and support on your own, Celerity takes on the parts of running AI well that usually get overlooked: correct implementation, keeping cost under control as usage grows, and support that actually resolves your IBM cases rather than just logging them.

Whichever route you choose, the baseline is the same:

• Coin reporting – monthly visibility of consumption, so spend never drifts unnoticed.
• Full support – first, second and third line, with your IBM cases owned through to closure.
• Case ownership – Celerity holds the IBM relationship on your behalf, start to finish.
• Annual sessions – two four-hour sessions a year, taken as consultancy or education, whichever is more useful to you at the time.
  

There are two ways to work with IBM Bob through Celerity, and the right one depends on what you already have in place.

Bob Resell suits teams with the in-house skills to run the platform themselves and who mainly need the right licence shape, with Celerity's deployment engagement available as an option.

Celerity IBM Bob Managed Service is the fully managed route: end-to-end operation, monthly reporting, and ongoing advice on getting more value from the platform. It's the better fit if you want a faster outcome without adding platform management to your team's workload.

Both routes start in the same place, with a workshop:

1. Workshop – identifies the use cases and confirms fit.
2. Scope – sizes the engagement against your starting point.
3. Deliver – stands up the platform.
4. Manage – takes over ongoing operation.

Different roles hit different walls with AI-assisted development, and our IBM Bob Managed Service is built to answer each of them directly:

If you're a CIO, the pressure is spend the board expects a return on, scattered across tools that grew up separately. BobaaS gives you one governed platform to standardise onto, with monthly reporting and Celerity owning the IBM relationship.

If you're a CTO, the issue is usually no agreed AI architecture and proofs of concept that stall before they reach production. BobaaS gives you a properly deployed, secured instance that's multi-model, so there's no single-provider lock-in, with a clear path into managed IBM watsonx Orchestrate® when agentic development is next on the roadmap.

If you're a Head of Development, the frustration is cycle times the business won't accept and a modernisation programme stuck under manual rework. A workshop identifies exactly where Bob earns its keep, then IBM's standard use cases deliver it.

If you're Head of Risk, Legal or Compliance, the gap is no formal AI governance and no way to audit an AI-assisted output. BobaaS gives you a governed platform with an audit trail. Celerity doesn't certify compliance on your behalf, and data residency is checked against your specific requirement rather than assumed.

IBM Bob is a development assistant, and its core use cases reflect that: Java modernisation, IBM i, mainframe, security and resiliency, legacy refactoring, and SDLC transformation. Other uses are credible but sit outside the standard service, scoped as their own workshop engagements rather than treated as off-the-shelf.

For organisations already exploring agentic AI more broadly, our IBM Bob Managed Service also sits naturally alongside Celerity's managed AI service, built on IBM watsonx Orchestrate, and complements the wider work Celerity does keeping IBM Power environments running securely day to day.

The best way to know whether Celerity's Managed Services for IBM Bob are the right fit for your team is to attend the workshop. It identifies where Bob adds value in your environment before anything is scoped or costed.

Book your workshop and see how quickly your coin spend gets brought under control, your IBM cases stop stalling in a queue, and running the platform becomes someone else's job rather than yours.