Custom Application Development & Enhancements
Acknowledge The Problem
Your Business Needs Can't Outpace Your Development Capacity
You have applications that need to be built, features that need to ship, and business stakeholders expecting results. But your team is stretched — managing maintenance, fighting fires, and trying to keep pace with growing demands. Meanwhile, the IBM i developers with the platform knowledge you need are increasingly hard to find and even harder to recruit.
The backlog grows. Timelines slip. Strategic projects stall while your team keeps the lights on.
Weeks lost = competitive ground lost
The Backlog
Projects stacking up
Internal Capacity
Bottleneck
Delivered
Nearly empty
This isn’t a failure of effort. It’s a capacity problem. And the traditional options aren’t solving it. Hiring takes months with no guarantee of the right skills. Offshore vendors lack the IBM i platform depth you require. And asking your existing team to absorb more work only increases burnout and risk.
Every week the backlog sits untouched is a week your competitors are pulling ahead.
The Options Available
You Have Options. Not All of Them Work.
When development demand outpaces internal capacity, most organizations consider one of three paths.
Hire Full-Time
Generalist FIrm
Internal Team
Profound Logic
IBM i Expertise
Uncertain - depends on candidate
Limited or none
Stretched thin
Deep expertise from day one
Time to Productivity
Months of recruiting + onboarding
Long learning curve
Already at capacity
Immediate contribution
Flexibility
Fixed cost, retention risk
Contract-based
No additional capacity
Scale up or down as needed
AI-Powered Delivery
Not included
Not specialized for IBM i
Would need investment
5-10x acceleration available
Hire Full-Time IBM i Developers
In theory, the right answer. In practice, a months-long search for a candidate pool that’s shrinking every year, with no certainty of fit, speed to productivity, or long-term retention.
Engage a Generalist IT Services Firm
Most don’t have meaningful IBM i experience. You’ll spend more time onboarding and correcting than delivering. Projects stall when the vendor doesn’t understand your platform, your architecture, or the business logic your operations depend on.
Ask Your Internal Team To Do More
This buys time, not outcomes. Overextended developers deliver slower, introduce more risk, and are more likely to leave. Critical projects get pushed further down the list.
Profound Logic
A partner with deep IBM i expertise, flexible engagement models, and AI-powered development capabilities that lets you move faster without forcing you to choose between leading the project yourself or handing it off entirely.
Profound Logic's Services
Development Capacity, On Your Terms
Profound Logic’s Custom Application Development and Enhancements service gives you the expertise and flexibility to get work done, whether you need us to lead a project end to end, embed skilled developers within your team, or accelerate delivery through AI-powered agentic coding.
We meet you where you are.
Some organizations need us to own a project entirely: define the requirements, build the solution, and hand off production-ready code. Others need experienced IBM i developers working alongside their team, contributing immediately without weeks of onboarding. And some are ready to leverage agentic coding environments that accelerate their existing developers by 5 to 10x. We support all three, and combinations of each.
Project-Based Delivery
We own the entire project from requirements to production-ready code. You define success, we deliver it.
Staff Augmentation
Experienced IBM i developers work alongside your team, contributing immediately without lengthy onboarding.
AI-Accelerated Development
We own the entire project from requirements to production-ready code. You define success, we deliver it.
What Sets Us Apart
Deep IBM i Expertise, From Day One
Our developers understand RPG, COBOL, IBM i architecture, and the business logic complexity that makes your systems mission-critical. There's no ramp-up period spent explaining the platform.
AI-Accelerated Delivery
We don't just bring people. We bring tools. Our agentic coding environments handle code generation, testing, and validation autonomously, turning multi-month projects into weeks and dramatically compressing the time between idea and production
Preservation Of Your Business Logic
Every application we build or enhance integrates with your existing IBM i environment. We protect the institutional knowledge embedded in your systems while delivering modern capabilities on top of it.
Flexible Engagement, Built Around Your Needs
Staff augmentation, project-based delivery, AI-powered development, or all three. You choose the engagement model that fits your team, your timeline, and your budget. Engagements scale up or down as your project demands shift.
From net-new applications to critical enhancements that have been sitting in the backlog too long, Profound Logic delivers work your team couldn’t get to, with the IBM i depth you can’t find anywhere else.
Frequently Asked Questions
Get answers to common questions about our services
What kinds of projects can Profound Logic take on?
We handle a wide range, from new web and mobile applications built on IBM i, to enhancements and integrations for existing RPG and COBOL applications, to futurizing specific modules or workflows without disrupting the larger system. If it runs on IBM i or needs to connect with it, we can help.
How quickly can your team get started?
Unlike traditional hiring, our developers don’t require lengthy onboarding. They understand IBM i architecture and can contribute to active projects from the start. For project-based engagements, we typically begin with a scoping session to align on requirements, acceptance criteria, and timelines before development kicks off.
Will your developers understand our existing codebase and business logic?
Yes, and preserving it is a priority, not an afterthought. Our team has decades of experience with RPG, COBOL, and the complex business logic that mission-critical IBM i applications carry. We analyze your existing code before building, ensuring enhancements integrate cleanly and nothing critical gets lost or broken in the process.
What's the difference between staff augmentation and project-based delivery?
Staff augmentation places experienced Profound Logic developers inside your team. They work alongside your staff, follow your processes, and contribute to your priorities. Project-based delivery means we own the outcome: we scope, build, test, and deliver a defined application or enhancement on an agreed timeline. Many clients use a combination of both depending on the project.
How does AI-powered development fit into this service?
For clients ready to accelerate, we can deploy agentic coding environments that automate code generation, testing, and validation, dramatically compressing delivery timelines. This can be layered into staff augmentation or project-based engagements, or implemented as a standalone capability that multiplies the output of your existing team. Either way, a Profound Logic expert is in the loop to govern quality and ensure production-ready results.