Maximo Application Suite (MAS) benefits, rankings and comprehensive ability to assess your assets

Maximo 7.6.1.x will reach end of support (EOS) on September 30, 2025. What once felt like a distant deadline is now less than a year away. The Maximo Application Suite (MAS) version 9.0 was released in June 2024, following the maturation of versions 8.0 in 2020 and 8.4 in 2021. MAS has undergone numerous updates and improvements, evolving well beyond the standalone enterprise asset management (EAM) features of version 7.6.1.x. For organizations still using the 7.6.1.x series or evaluating new EAM solutions, MAS offers various strategies to extend asset lifespan, enhance efficiency, and reduce downtime for critical assets. Before exploring these strategies, let’s examine the business value of Maximo and MAS's position in key market categories.

The International Data Corporation (IDC) published a white paper in May 2024 detailing the business value of IBM Maximo. Key findings from the report highlight significant benefits in asset performance and management costs:

The report is available for download here:

IDC: The Business Value of IBM Maximo

Whether you are implementing MAS from scratch, converting from a legacy EAM solution, or upgrading, your organization will benefit from the features available within the Manage application. Transitioning to the MAS platform allows you to leverage new capabilities to enhance the management of your critical assets. MAS provides a unified platform that integrates EAM, asset performance management (APM), remote monitoring, reliability-centered maintenance (RCM), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML).

MAS is a strong player in two competitive categories. The Verdantix Green Quadrant, developed by the independent research firm Verdantix, evaluates and compares companies in specific markets using factual and unbiased analysis. Verdantix reports rank IBM MAS as the top provider in EAM and recognize it as a leader in APM software. Fourteen vendors were evaluated for the EAM study (published October 2024), while twenty leading APM providers were assessed in the APM study (published July 2024). With these results, stakeholders can confidently invest in EAM with a clear vision and roadmap for growth into APM.

MAS enables organizations to build upon existing processes from Maximo 7.6.1.x or legacy EAM solutions. The document below outlines a high-level sample process flow, illustrating how attention can be drawn to assets through work order creation. The grey section below highlights the capabilities available in the Manage application. Similar to Maximo 7.6.1.x, you can manage work orders, asset management, and other supporting processes related to corrective maintenance (CM) and preventive maintenance (PM) for your critical assets. Once work orders are assigned to technicians, mobile solutions can enhance execution and completion efficiency. Manage is built on Maximo 7.6.1.x, incorporating new features that significantly contribute to its standing as a leading EAM product.

The first step in an implementation of MAS or an upgrade from Maximo 7.6.1.x is to achieve stability. After establishing stability with Manage, the next phase involves enhancing your organization's ability to reduce critical asset downtime through new applications and features that integrate with the APM side of the solution. These tools can introduce various roles into your processes, increasing awareness of underperforming assets. The high-level sample process flow diagram below shows scenarios illustrating how new features and applications can be incorporated (see sections in green).

Reliability engineers can utilize health, criticality, and risk scores within the Health application, drawing on data from Manage. Asset health monitoring can identify poorly performing assets with high criticality, prompting the creation of service requests or work orders in Manage for further investigation.

Operations managers benefit from near real-time sensor readings and Operational Technology (OT) data. Visibility into operational performance, aided by anomaly detection methods and threshold breaches, allows them to quickly generate service requests in Manage for immediate attention.

Reliability engineers can leverage the Predict application to gain AI insights from four pre-built models that can be trained using your Manage data. For example, a model might calculate the predicted failure date; if this date occurs before a scheduled preventive maintenance date for an asset, a service request or work order can be generated in Manage for investigation.

Now is the ideal time to upgrade to MAS if you have not already begun your journey or to initiate your implementation. Studies underscore its value in the marketplace and its capability to provide a comprehensive assessment of your assets. The EOS of Maximo 7.6.1.x is fast approaching.