Built In · Built in, not bolted on. AI for IBM i.
Issue 01 · A note from Atlanta · November 2026
93% of us are using AI. 44% of us have no governance framework for it.
Last week COMMON held NAViGATE inside IBM TechXchange for the first time, and I got to stand up with Amy Williams of Fortra and share what 147 of you told us about AI. This issue covers what we learned, what the main stage said about it, and my latest essay, on what still holds its value when AI keeps getting cheaper.
01 / What you told us
Adopting fast. Governing slowly.
This is the community's own read, not a vendor's. 147 of you responded to the COMMON and Fortra survey, and every one of you answered every question. On the AI Readiness Index, the IBM i community scored 54.5 out of 100. That puts us in the Building stage: past exploring, adopting fast, governing slowly.
The read, at a glance
Use an AI tool today / have no governance framework
85% are already evaluating or piloting AI, and 24% have it live. The adoption is real. The governance hasn't caught up.
The three big challenges
Security. The #1 barrier to getting started, and the lowest readiness score of all nine areas we measured: 43 out of 100.
Governance. 44% have no framework at all. Only 7% have one fully embedded, while 24% already have AI live.
ROI. Unclear ROI is the #2 barrier, and two-thirds can't yet name a concrete purpose for AI.
How we compare
Not behind. In step with everyone.
93% using AI tools, 7% with fully embedded governance: the same numbers as the market as a whole. Same adoption, same gap, and a narrow window to get ahead of it.
Go deeper
The full survey results →Why COMMON
Why this matters to me.
Before I get to what COMMON is doing about those numbers, a word on why this matters to me.
COMMON has been a huge help to me throughout my career, so I'm a big fan. The IBM i community is like a family: close-knit, passionate and committed to the platform. There's nothing else quite like it, and COMMON, the largest IBM Power user group in the world, is where that family comes together.
I'm just as passionate about AI. I think it's the biggest shift in human history, and it's moving at light speed.
My career on the midrange platform, what COMMON gives this community, and what AI is about to change: this is where they all come together. It's a critical time, and a real opportunity for us to work through this shift together, as a community, instead of one shop at a time.
COMMON's answer
An AI track at PowerUp 2027.
COMMON has made AI a priority. COMMON President Peg Tuttle said so in her keynote, and the board's AI committee is working with the COMMON team to deliver it. You told us what's in the way: security, governance and ROI. So that's where COMMON is focusing.
It starts with a dedicated AI track at PowerUp 2027, built around those three, with hands-on sessions for where most of us actually are, the Building stage. Alongside it: a board-led AI panel, more AI education in COMMON's library you can use year-round, and the AI Readiness Index every year, so the community always knows where it stands.
PowerUp 2027 is April 26–29 in Denver, and Super Early Bird member pricing is open through December 6. I hope to see you there.
02 / What the main stage said
The industry noticed too.
IBM spent its main stage on exactly this gap. Dinesh Nirmal, SVP of IBM Software, opened by saying only about a quarter of AI agents are enterprise-ready today. Neel Sundaresan, who runs IBM's automation and AI software, put it plainly: "You cannot blame AI for something going wrong." And Hillery Hunter, GM of IBM Power, said customers value control even more than capability.
The headline announcement was IBM Agent Identity, now generally available: a registered, verifiable identity for every agent, with a named owner, set access and a trail of what it did. IBM Bob was at the center of the Sandbox all week, and watsonx Orchestrate added tools for testing agents before they go live and containing them once they do. The tools for governing agents are showing up. The question is where they land on your system.
From programmer to architect.
The other conversation on the main stage was about people, and it was a great session. On a panel titled "The Future of Software Development in the Age of AI," Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, said invention, clarity of purpose and understanding what your customers actually need are "still absolutely front and center." Garrett Rowe, founder and CEO of NeuralSeek, described the developer's role as "an overseer, an architect and a unification force."
Then O'Reilly closed with the line I'd leave you with: "the current moment is still super early." The things we'll all one day wonder how we missed, he said, haven't appeared yet. For a community that has spent decades encoding how the business actually works, that's a promotion, not a threat.
For an IBM i shop, an owner, a scope and an off switch for every actor will sound very familiar too. I wrote about exactly that from Atlanta, in the latest chapter of The Bob Chronicles.
From Pegasus4i
Want to see where your own IBM i stands? The Agent-Ready Read is eight questions, takes three minutes and needs no account. The free workspace lets you map one workflow: where it waits, and where agents would pay off.
Rather see it running first? Silver Lake Financial Group, our demonstration lender, runs governed agents on IBM i: agents at the door, IBM i makes the decision, every step on the record.
Also from the week
PHP2Shell flaws reach IBM i web servers; patched PHP builds are outAI found these flaws, and parts of the internet went dark rather than run unpatched. If you run PHP on IBM i, patch.
“When the best defense available is to stop serving customers, the constraint is no longer finding the flaw. It’s your ability to change what you run.”
My take: A routine patch, if you were ready →
IBM i 7.6 TR3 and 7.5 TR9 are planned for November 20Announced in Atlanta, including new services for tracking PTFs and security patches.
This week's IBM i PTFs close auth holes in SST/DST and NavigatorIdentity for people comes before identity for agents.
Read-only MCP access to Db2 for i arrives as open sourceA governed door for agents, starting with read-only.
Reply to the email any time. It comes to me.
Reggie
Reggie Britt · Founder, Pegasus4i · COMMON Board of Directors
Built In.
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Pegasus4i is an IBM Business Partner. Survey figures are from the COMMON × Fortra State of AI in the IBM i Community survey, 2026 (n=147). IBM statements are from IBM's TechXchange 2026 coverage. References do not imply endorsement. Silver Lake Financial Group is a fictitious demonstration company built by Pegasus4i.