DevOps on IBM i: how to bring your core business applications into continuous integration and delivery

By the Redsis Application Modernization team · October 2026 · 6 min read

A core that manages the savings of millions

Colombia's private pension system is huge: according to Asofondos, the country's pension funds managed more than COP 525 trillion as of September 2025, spread across four administrators. It's also concentrated: the two largest hold close to 90% of members, according to figures published by La República. Our client is number two, with roughly three in ten members in the system.

At that scale, severance and mandatory pension applications can't go down or break after a change. But they can't stand still either: regulation, new products and digital channels require the core to evolve at the same pace as the rest of the organization.

Why DevOps doesn't "just arrive" on IBM i

The company had already adopted DevOps as its modernization strategy on other platforms. The core was left out for a concrete reason: the open-source tools that work well for web, mobile and cloud-native applications aren't effective on IBM i by themselves. You need a technology layer that understands the platform:

• Source code for RPG or COBOL traditionally lives in source physical file members, not in flat files ready for Git.
• Builds depend on relationships between programs, files and objects that must be analyzed to know what to recompile and in what order.
• Deployment means moving objects and database changes between libraries and environments, with the ability to roll back.

ARCAD for DevOps: the missing layer

ARCAD for DevOps is a modular suite designed to solve exactly that. Its capabilities include:

• Managing native IBM i code with Git and platforms such as GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket.
• Automated builds driven by dependency analysis across components.
• Testing and code quality built into the cycle.
• Integration with Jenkins, Azure DevOps, Jira and SonarQube , so IBM i joins the same pipeline as every other technology.
• DROPS , the release orchestration module, for synchronized deployment of IBM i applications and database changes, with rollback.

For our client, Redsis built an initial pipeline with the core components, from application audit through production deployment, with ARCAD for DevOps and DROPS licensing, implementation services with second-level vendor support, hands-on guidance through configuration and initial operation, and one year of managed administration of the platform.

Five lessons for bringing the core into CI/CD

1. Start with a proof of concept

In this case, a PoC in a sandbox environment let the client see how ARCAD integrated open-source tools with its environment before committing. It's the fastest way to turn skepticism into evidence.

2. Audit before you automate

The pipeline started with an audit of the applications. Knowing your code inventory, its dependencies and its state is what makes it possible to automate builds and deployments without surprises.

3. One standard for every platform

The goal wasn't a "special" DevOps for IBM i, but the same standard for Windows, Linux, Unix and IBM i. That simplifies governance, audit and team training.

4. Move in phases

Discovery, implementation, launch, training and transition to production. A working initial pipeline with the core components is a better starting point than an ambitious design that never ships.

5. Don't leave the team on its own after go-live

The change is as cultural as it is technical. Training for development and operations, second-level vendor support and a year of managed administration give new practices time to take hold.

The result: the core moves at the same pace as everything else

Today the company's severance and mandatory pension applications have an end-to-end DevOps pipeline on IBM i: agile, continuous and controlled deployment with no manual tasks, on the same cross-platform standard as the rest of its software, and validated beforehand in a proof of concept.

Where to start

If your organization already practices DevOps on web and mobile but your IBM i core still relies on manual deployments, a good first step is a scoped proof of concept on a real application. At Redsis we combine more than 25 years of mission-critical platform experience in Latin America with solutions such as ARCAD for DevOps to modernize the lifecycle of your IBM i applications.