IBM offers self-hosted and air-gapped deployment for its Bob coding platform

IBM has made a self-hosted version of Bob, its agentic software development platform, generally available. The release lets enterprises run the tool entirely on their own infrastructure instead of through IBM’s cloud, opening it up to companies that cannot send proprietary code to an outside service.

Bob is built to assist with coding tasks using AI agents, software that can carry out multi-step work with limited human supervision. According to IBM, the self-hosted option covers three settings: on premises inside a company’s own data centers, in private or sovereign clouds, and in air-gapped networks, meaning systems with no connection to the outside internet.

That last category matters most for enterprises in finance, government and other regulated industries, where source code and data are often barred from leaving internal systems. By running Bob locally, IBM says those organizations can get agent-assisted coding without moving their code off premises. The approach echoes a wider pattern among enterprise software vendors, who are increasingly offering on-premises versions of AI tools as large customers weigh the productivity gains of AI agents against data governance and security rules.

Enterprises deploying Bob this way choose their own underlying AI model. For deployments that need full isolation, IBM points to NVIDIA Nemotron or Poolside Laguna, two models that can run entirely within a customer’s own environment. Enterprises that don’t need total isolation can instead run Bob in a hybrid setup, connecting it to Claude, Gemini or GPT models hosted outside the air-gapped boundary.

IBM is also offering optional Premium Packages that extend Bob’s reach beyond general-purpose coding. These packages add support for Java development and for modernizing IBM i and IBM Z systems, the company’s platforms for midrange and mainframe computing that still run large amounts of legacy code at banks, insurers and government agencies.

The announcement, reported by MarkTechPost, does not specify pricing, a release date for the Premium Packages, or performance figures for Bob running on any of the named models. IBM has not disclosed which customers, if any, are already running the self-hosted version, and the exact scope of agent capability under each model option is not detailed in IBM’s public materials.

What to watch next is how enterprises in air-gapped sectors respond to the offering, and whether IBM publishes benchmarks comparing Bob’s performance across the Nemotron, Poolside Laguna and hybrid model options.