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Good morning, I’m Andrew Jeffery and I’m pleased to be providing you with a short overview of Maximo Application Suite, which we shorten to MAS. I’ll explain Maximo Manage the new name for Maximo, it is the Manage application in the suite. We’ll also discuss what to expect for those clients upgrading from Maximo 7.6.1.3. 

When we discuss MAS, you’ll find out that it has significant architecture or platform changes. With Maximo Manage you’ll see the breadth of capabilities and how some previous add-ons are now included with Maximo Manage and are available to be used. I’ll briefly discuss licensing which also changed with MAS. 

I’m intending a follow-up presentation on new features in Maximo Manage, so I’ll leave that for another day. Instead, I’ll spend a little time explaining what the upgrade means for a Maximo administrator or an end user, and this will include a slide on IBMs lifecycle policy for Maximo Application Suite which is important to understand so that you can plan how to approach upgrading your Maximo system in the future.

We’ll finish with a quick summary, so let’s get started.

What is Maximo Application Suite (MAS)?

Maximo Application Suite (MAS) is a set of applications providing Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), Asset Performance Management (APM) and two other applications. MAS is recognized as a leading Asset Life-Cycle Management (ALM) application.

• Maximo Manage is our EAM solution and is what most people will recognize as Maximo.
• Maximo Monitor is our Internet of Things platform providing near real-time condition monitoring.
• Maximo Health gives you insight into asset health and allows you to perform risk-based and financially optimized maintenance.
• Maximo Predict has AI-based predictive models that extend Maximo Health to predict the expected next failure date and other factors. It is the third APM application along with Monitor and Health.
• Maximo Visual Inspection uses AI to identify defects visually, through photo or video. It is used with drones as the image suggests but it could be a fixed camera on a production line.
• Maximo Assist provides assistance to a technician, by remotely connecting a technician with a supervisor or other expert in your organisation, where the technician’s smart phone camera becomes the eyes for the expert where the expert can annotate the image to explain the steps to perform.

Together these applications provide the means for clients to move from EAM to Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) which is all about extending the lifespan of assets, increasing their efficiency by reducing downtime and doing this in a sustainable way. The strategic asset lifecycle considers the asset from initial planning, through its acquisition and all the way through operations to its disposal and will consider not just maintenance costs but major repairs or replacement decisions and will involve risk management and investment planning. Both APM and ALM are being enabled through technology innovations, and AI.

Maximo Application Suite uses a container-based architecture running on IBM Red Hat OpenShift and can be deployed on premise or in a public cloud, IBM Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure. Edge devices can be used with both Maximo Monitor and Maximo Visual Inspection. In comparison to virtual machines containers are lightweight and portable, they share the operating system with other containers and the image size is therefore a lot smaller than a virtual machine which contains the operating system. They are quicker to spin-up/down and use less hardware resources than the equivalent virtual machines. Containers are also easier to scale, and they provide flexibility to scale those parts which need scaling as opposed to everything that is in the virtual machine. 

There are multiple containers providing different capabilities, one provides the database, another the webserver, the other applications in the suite will also require containers. AI capabilities that you find in Monitor, Predict, Visual Inspection and now in Maximo Manage also rely on other container-based components, and this is set to continue in the future with the growth in AI capabilities. One change in MAS 9.0 is to move to watsonx, which provides generative AI capabilities, this also requires resources to run. Some of the analytics capabilities across the suite use IBM Cloud Pak for Data as does Cognos Analytics which Maximo clients are entitled to use with Maximo. Integration between other IBM Sustainability products is being provided with App Connect, for example between Maximo and TRIRIGA or Maximo and Envizi. A change to the architecture of Maximo was necessary to support the future functional footprint of Maximo, this process started several years ago and has now been implemented by many new and existing clients.

Maximo Application Suite does require more resources than Maximo 7.6, but then the two are incomparable. The move to containerization is an example of the architecture change which software products need to go through from time to time as technology changes. Maximo is now set-up to take advantage of a world which will be dominated by an ever-increasing use of AI, you might say it is future-ready.

From an upgrade perspective, yes, the architectural change does take some time to get used to, and it is likely that you will need help from IBM or an IBM Business Partner. There are some other changes which we will discuss in the section before the summary, but I wanted to say that the database is largely unchanged apart from those changes supporting new features, user interface changes are minimal if you do a like-for-like upgrade, which is what I would recommend. Customizations will need retesting, but likely they will remain unchanged as part of the upgrade.

The latest release is MAS 9.0, and a dot-zero release typically indicates something major has happened, this is not the case, it could easily have been called MAS 8.12, as it is an incremental change to 8.11, but it was called MAS 9.0 to align all the applications across the suite with the same version number.

Maximo Manage

For many existing Maximo clients, they are using what IBM are now calling Maximo Manage, it is the application of the suite where you create and manage your assets. Existing clients who are upgrading to MAS will not see many changes to the applications they currently use and no doubt they will continue to call what they see as Maximo and Maximo Manage might only be a term that is referenced when dealing with IBM. For this presentation, I continue to use the term you are used to, Maximo.

Maximo has a core set of modules which you see in the wheel on the left, as existing clients you should be familiar with this. When you upgrade to Maximo Application Suite (MAS) there is an additional set of included capabilities, Linear, Calibration, Mobile, Scheduler and Reliability, the first four of these were all previously add-ons with their own license, now they are included. I am including Reliability as an included capability; this was new in MAS 8.11 and enhanced in MAS 9.0. IBM are currently calling it an add-on; I think because it currently needs to be installed, but as licensing has been unified to a single part number (apart from Maximo IT) it can be treated as being included.

There are additional add-ons Spatial, Service Provider, Health, Safety and Environment Manager (HSE), Asset Configuration Manager (ACM), Maximo IT (formerly known as IBM Control Desk (ICD)) and Maximo Optimizer which is used with Schedule Optimization and Asset Investment Optimization, a part of Maximo Health. Maximo also has Industry Solutions for Transport, Utilities, Oil and Gas (O&G), Nuclear, Aviation and Civil Infrastructure. In addition, there are a set of connectors and integrations to other IBM products. Each of the additional capabilities, add-ons and industry solutions you see on the right provide new applications or they extend the applications which are found in the core modules.

You may be thinking that this is a colourful slide, perhaps there are too many colours. Each of these colours (and the icons) are used across Maximo Secrets, for example in the Module descriptions and Application Maps. I don’t have articles on everything you see, and it is likely that I won’t write about everything. The observant of you might have noticed the same colour for HSE and O&G, this is because HSE is a very large subset of the Oil and Gas Industry Solution. 

Included Capabilities

There are five add-ons that are included in Maximo Manage in MAS 9.0. Linear, Calibration and Scheduler require no installation. Maximo Mobile requires installation on the device to work offline, but there are online only role-based applications that are installed as part of Maximo Manage. Reliability Strategies, is still called an add-on, it requires an installation, but users are entitled to use it, and it does not require additional AppPoints. These are the five sets of functionality which I am calling Included Capabilities, I didn’t include Spatial as that would consume additional AppPoints, if it is installed. I’ll explain AppPoints and the new license model in the next slide.

Linear functionality is used with roads, pipelines, rail tracks, and cables, where work must be defined by a measured distance along the linear asset. Its functionality spreads across many applications including assets, features, relationships, service requests, work orders, meters, condition monitoring, routes and PMs, there are also some additional fields in classifications. There is integration with Maximo Spatial and dynamic job plans support the estimation of work. It isn’t yet fully supported in Maximo Mobile, but that development process has started.

Calibration is used with instrument calibration including loop calibration. It does go quite deep in its calculations and determination of whether the as-left values are within tolerances, but it can also be used in simpler scenarios. It is used with clients in the life sciences and nuclear industries, but it is applicable to other industries, for example manufacturing, chemicals, and oil and gas. Many Maximo clients have a calibration team and knowing whether assets and instruments are calibrated is common.

Maximo Mobile supports both online and offline processes with work orders, service requests, inventory, assets and receiving. There are role-based applications with similar functionality, but these do not work offline, only online. Calibration is supported with Maximo Mobile, but linear assets functionality in MAS 9.0 is only partly developed. There is mapping and functions to support Visual Inspection and collaborating with an expert – Maximo Assist.

Scheduler is a set of eight graphical applications, Graphical Scheduling (including the Large Projects version), Graphical Assignment, Graphical Work Week, Graphical Resource View, Graphical Assignment-Repair Facilities, Graphical Crew Management, and Graphical Appointment Book. There are two dashboards Scheduling Dashboard and Dispatching Dashboard which both require the Optimizer to be installed and there is an AppPoint consumption for this. There is also a set of administration applications.

Reliability Strategies is an add-on that can be installed and used without increasing your AppPoint requirements, unless this introduces new users to Maximo. It consist of a library of failure modes and mitigation activities for over 800 asset types. In MAS 9.0 you can now create your own library. However, the data is mainly stored in the cloud, and not in the Manage database. There is some linking to assets, but not to other Maximo Manage records like PMs, Meters, Job Plans, Routes and Inspections. The roadmap looks to build RCM capability into Maximo, but it is how it eventually links with existing data which is key to its use. For some, the data being held externally will be a barrier to its use.

MAS License Model

This slide has been taken from an IBM roadmap dated March 2024 and shows the new AppPoint licensing model. Previously in Maximo 7.6.1.3 there were lots of add-ons, industry solutions and connectors and each of these required separate licensing. With the introduction of MAS, the licensing was going to become a lot more complex, and something had to be done to make it a lot simpler. In MAS there is a single part number with the exception of Maximo IT.

Licensing is either concurrent or authorised. Authorised is for a specific person, and this model is common with existing clients, but a concurrent basis may work better. You need to work with IBM to work out a conversion from your existing license before you can consider upgrading to MAS.

There are four user types which consume different AppPoints depending on what parts of MAS a user accesses and whether their setting is authorized or concurrent. A few users will be marked as Administration and their AppPoint consumption will be slightly different. The maximum AppPoints consumed by any one person is 15. There are also some AppPoints that are consumed from the pool as soon as an installation is made. For example, Spatial consumes 20 AppPoints. For MAS 9.0 there was a change to the functionality provided in the Assist application and this no longer consumes AppPoints.

When a user logs in you consume AppPoints, when the user logs out the AppPoints are given back. There may be no restriction to logging in, however, it is audited and if people don’t log out, then you may have to buy more AppPoints, therefore encourage all users to log out whenever they can. Perhaps look to reduce the timeout period.

Some existing users will be Limited which restricts the user to applications of three modules. A technician who is only performing work in Maximo and uses a mobile application whether that is provided by a 3^rd party, or they are using Maximo Mobile will consume 5 AppPoints when concurrent or 2 AppPoints if authorized. Using a 3^rd party mobile solution does require a Maximo license as has always been the case.

If as a user, you are not limited to 3 modules, then you will need to be at least a Base user consuming 10 AppPoints if concurrent or 3 AppPoints if authorized. This also applies if you use any part of Maximo Scheduler, a planner, supervisor or someone assigning work would typically be a Base user.

Premium users will consume 15 AppPoints if concurrent or 5 AppPoints if authorized, they have access to all applications that are installed. These are the power users who are using the Industry Solutions and add-ons like ACM, Service Provider and HSE or are using advanced applications like Predict and Visual Inspection. However, note that Limited users can also use the Industry Solution and Add-on applications if they do not exceed the three-module limit. Therefore, it is wrong to assume that installing an Industry Solution will suddenly jump all users from Base to Premium, that is not the case, installing an industry solution or add-on does not increase the required AppPoints, it is only if you start to change the access rights to the applications will the required AppPoints increase the next time a person logs in. 

A Limited user who had access to the Work Orders module, will not consume additional AppPoints if they now start to use the functionality in the Work Order Tracking applications provided by Service Provider, Transportation or HSE. On the other-hand if you give them access to perform Warranty Claims in Transportation, enter Custom Agreements in Service Provider, or create Permit to Work records in HSE and that requires them to use more than three modules then they will become Premium users.

As a generalisation it is the users who set-up data in applications where that data is used on a transaction record that typically require a Base or Premium user type. The users who are entering transactional records like work orders, conducting an inspection, processing a purchase order or performing inventory functions, they typically do not exceed the three-module limit and would hence stay as Limited user type.

It is prudent to keep control of Security Groups and their application rights, because it is very easy to add a user to another security group because they need access to an application, and then suddenly find that they have access to applications in other modules and now have jumped from Limited to Base or even Premium user type. My advice would be, understand the AppPoint license model and review and perhaps revise your Security Groups.

If you believe you will want to use HSE or Transportation in the future, then a good time to install them is when upgrading to MAS 9.0, just limit the use of the applications initially to a handful of users who will help you to exploit their functionality.

What differences do I need to be aware of?

If you are aiming to upgrade from Maximo 7.6 to MAS 9.0 and planning to make this a technical upgrade, one that does not deploy new functionality or change your processes, which is what I would recommend, then you will see little difference.

Probably the biggest difference is that People and Users are defined at the suite level using the suite Administration. If you select local authentication then people/users are stored in a MongoDB database and as part of the upgrade process the data will be transferred, the passwords will need to be reset in MAS for each user. MAS can be set up to support authentication via LDAP or SAML. The people and users from the MongoDB are synchronized with the applications in Maximo Manage, and there are restrictions now in those applications, for example you cannot create a user in Maximo Manage. Security Groups are still used to provide application access within Maximo Manage, but this is likely to also go to the suite-level Administration in a future release. New users and entitlements are defined at the suite Administration, therefore some tweaking of entitlements at the user level will be required. Administrators will need to become familiar with some aspects of the Administration application.

The skin for Maximo Manage and its applications is now fixed, the System Property mxe.webclient.skin no longer exists. The System Property mxe.webclient.verticalLabels that allowed you to decide whether to have a field label beside or above the field has also been removed. Field labels are now always positioned above the field, therefore if you had not made this change as you migrated through different Maximo 7.6 versions, you will have no choice in MAS 9.0.

So why the change to the user interface? Maximo Application Suite will use Carbon for all new applications going forward, all IBM software does or will need to. There is a common look and feel called the Pattern Asset Library built in React which defines the colours, fonts, layouts, icons, etc, to make all IBM software look familiar, it is this consistency which will help to reduce the learning curve. This is being implemented in Maximo through Role-Based Applications (RBA). It is not just a way of modernizing the Maximo user interface, but it is also leveraging user experience designs collated across multiple products. 

You will see differences in the Start Center, the Mast Head icons, module navigation, and in the applications. For those who were on the latest skin in 7.6.1.3 these differences are slight, and in most cases intuitive. For end users, no training should be necessary, perhaps a short document explaining some of the differences. Users should be encouraged to log-in to a test environment and check that they can navigate successfully, and within 15 minutes a user should be OK with the way Maximo Manage is now presented. Some of the changes include the positioning of the menu that includes the More Search Fields action, it is now in the top right, next to the magnifying glass. The List page is no longer a tab but above the queries and actions. YORN fields are now toggles instead of a checkbox. Table window buttons have now moved to a blue Actions dropdown, above the columns on the right, and are no longer below the table. This is a bit different, but users should quickly adapt. 

The one case which is not intuitive and may require some configuration is the table window navigation to the next page of records, it is in the bottom right of the table window. If the number of rows displayed is too many, you need to vertically scroll to find the buttons to navigate to the next page, or previous page. If your List page was configured to show 20 rows, then you may need to reduce this to show 10. With the table window filter you may get away with 13 records, but who pages 13 at a time. Ideally across Maximo you do not want a vertical scroll on a table window, so you need to configure the number of rows to display based on the screen resolution that most users use. If you do nothing your users will get used to it, but most will not like it, I still don’t 3 years later. 

If you are currently using Work Centers, then beware, as they no longer exist, they have been replaced by Role Based Applications (RBA). If you look very closely at the details of these applications, you will find some differences where Work Center features have not yet been added to the Role-Based Applications. For example, the technician cannot indicate that the time being recorded is overtime. A supervisor cannot review service requests and turn them into work orders. A supervisor cannot make an assignment. There are no pick lists in inventory.

The Role Based Applications are different, the users will need time to familiarise with the new application. Administrators may need to adjust the Object Structure queries so that the users receive a similar set of data, Security Groups will need adjusting, as these are different applications, and if you configured the Work Centers, then you will need to add those configurations to the Role Based Application. The good news is that configuration of these new applications is much easier and approaching the ease of use of the Application Designer (but not there yet).

For clients using Maximo Anywhere it is no longer supported on MAS 9.0, the IBM alternative is Maximo Mobile which also works both online and offline. Like the comments for Work Centers, you will need to see whether there is any functionality in Maximo Anywhere which does not exist in Maximo Mobile. With MAS 9.0 Maximo Mobile now supports Calibration, and while support for linear assets has started development there is still some way to go. Maximo Mobile does not yet support asset auditing, or asset moves/swaps, except the complex asset switch which is part of Asset Configuration Management (ACM). There is no Incident Reporter, an HSE/O&G mobile application.

With integration using JMS queues the recommendation is to move to Kafka.

BIRT reports will need recompiling as BIRT 4.8 is now supported. The minimum supported databases are DB2 11.5 SE, Oracle 19.3 and SQLServer 2019, therefore if you are on earlier versions you will need to update the databases first. You may find that a change in the database might cause issues, for example SQLServer had changes to the TRIM function, you may need to make some code changes, running complex BIRT reports are quite good at finding these database changes.

One final point Maximo Spatial 9.0 has deprecated support for Bing Maps and Google Maps as map providers. The alternatives are ArcGIS Server, ArcGIS Online maps and OpenStreetMaps. 

IBM’s Lifecycle Policy for MAS

The slide has been taken from a recent IBM roadmap for MAS. All IBM software is moving towards a one-year release cycle, which you can expect in June of each year. When there is a new release, it will be supported with fixes for three years. A client can purchase extended support for one year and a further three years, but there are limitations to what will be supplied as fixes during that period. All clients should aim to upgrade to a new release within the first three years after the date at which a release occurs.

MAS 9.0 was released in June 2024, as each month passes without upgrading to this release, the period of support for fixes, including security fixes gets smaller. That should tell you that you should consider upgrading early in that three-year cycle and probably more frequently than you may have been used to.

IBM are on a continuous development of Maximo, as they have been for several years. New features for MAS 9.1 which at the time of writing is still 8 months away, will have been developed and tested. Some new features change the database, but rarely do they change an existing client’s data. This has been a policy for at least a decade. New features also rarely change the existing business logic of Maximo, and when they do, they tend to be switched on using a System Property so that there is no impact on existing clients. Therefore, your configurations and customization should, in many cases, work on the new release. That is not to say, that an existing Maximo client can upgrade unprepared and without testing, but the amount of testing you do will be dependent on the new features introduced in the areas where you have configuration and customization, and you should test your primary business processes. 

IBM are intending introducing a Feature Channel which will provide new features that can be tested on a development or test environment. These are released features, IBM Support will process a case if you find a defect, and I’ll be able to write about them in Maximo Secrets, however, they cannot be deployed in a production environment until the new features are bundled together the following June. This will allow you to test out new features early, determine whether you are going to deploy them, and prepare for their introduction.

When you get a new release, there are also several fixes. Unfortunately, some fixes do unintentionally break Maximo, which is why testing your primary business processes is important. I doubt many clients will look to upgrade to a new MAS release within a month of its release date, even if they have subscribed to the feature channel, but a good time to consider upgrading to the next release will be from mid-September to the end of the calendar year. 

I think many clients will also look to align their own changes to the same date as an upgrade to MAS. If you are on a 6-month release cycle for changes, then a yearly upgrade of MAS will be a pattern that many clients will adopt going forward.

For existing clients on Maximo 7.6.0.10, 7.6.1.2 or 7.6.1.3 you can upgrade directly to MAS 9.0. you do not need to go via MAS 8.x.

Summary – Upgrading to MAS 9.0

In summary:

• There are some big infrastructure/platform changes with the move to using containers. This is an evolution which software products go through, roughly every 10 years. It is the ideal time to consider a cloud platform if you are still on-premise.
• Your Maximo 7.6.x database when upgraded to MAS 9.0 will have additional objects and attributes, but there is no change to your data.
• The approach to Maximo licensing has changed, it was previously too complex, now there is a single part number, and you are entitled to use all add-ons, industry solutions and other applications in the suite (with one exception). This allows proof of concepts, or proof of value projects, previously you needed a licensing discussion with IBM, otherwise you couldn’t download the software.
• All of the Work Centers have been replaced with Role-Based Applications, but for some applications that is not like for like, there are differences.
• Maximo Anywhere is no longer supported and like Work Centers you should examine the functionality of Maximo Mobile to see whether the functionality you use is supported, or whether some of it is missing.
• There are user interface changes, but users should be able to adapt to these easily, but you need to make them aware of the main changes.
• User Administration has changed to the suite-level and your Maximo Administrators need to be aware of the changes so that they can still create and maintain users.
• Finally, the new simplified licensing with AppPoints will make it easier to be compliant, equally it will be easier for IBM to check that you are compliant, therefore administrators should learn how to check the status so that action is taken early. You should review who has access to which applications and make any corrections, especially for Limited users.

Thank You

I hope you enjoyed the presentation and now have an appreciation of what it means to upgrade to Maximo Application Suite. 

Thank you for listening.