IBM has officially unveiled its Watsonx Code Assistant, an AI-powered tool designed to assist enterprise developers and IT operators in coding more efficiently. This generative AI assistant employs natural language prompts and is now available to address two key enterprise use cases: IT Automation through Watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed and mainframe application modernisation with Watsonx Code Assistant for Z.

Watsonx Code Assistant is built on the foundation of IBM’s Granite AI models, running on the IBM Watsonx platform. The tool utilises a decoder architecture for natural language processing, enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of coding processes. Watsonx Code Assistant aligns with IBM’s commitment to accelerate the development process while maintaining the core principles of trust, security, and compliance.

According to a recent report from IDC, this AI-powered tool can help improve code quality by promoting best practices in code recommendations, eliminating the need for unvetted repositories.

Kareem Yusuf, Senior Vice President of Product Management and Growth at IBM Software, stated, “Watsonx Code Assistant puts AI-assisted code development and application modernization tools directly into the hands of developers to help address skills gaps and increase productivity.”

The launch of Watsonx Code Assistant represents another addition to IBM’s suite of Watsonx assistants, including Orchestrate and Assistant, all of which aim to make generative AI accessible and non-disruptive for enterprises.

Key data from the technical preview of this tool indicates increased productivity by 20-45%, with an overall average acceptance rate of 85% for AI-generated content recommendations.

Ashesh Badani, Chief Product Officer at Red Hat, expressed that Watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed could “close skills gaps, create greater organizational efficiencies, and free enterprise IT to deliver even more business value.”

Watsonx Code Assistant for Z focuses on the modernization of mainframe applications by facilitating the translation of COBOL to Java on IBM Z. It aims to accelerate the modernization of mainframe applications while leveraging the performance, security, and resiliency capabilities of IBM Z. T

IBM’s long-term partnership with TCS has played a pivotal role in the development and deployment of this tool. Together, they have created a full-service practice for in-place application modernization. With the potential for developer productivity gains, the tool is expected to find applications on the mainframe.