CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
21 May 2008
Product News
IBM Maximo Drives Cost Savings; Expands Scope of Assets Managed; Supports Application Consolidation
IBM announced its latest commitment to the Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) market with the release of the next version of its asset management solution, Maximo Asset Management 7.1.
IBM Maximo Asset Management 7.1 provides support for linear assets in addition to the improved ability to manage asset life cycle and maintenance management for a wider range of assets types including production, facilities and transportation assets (This combination of management activities is known as EAM). These improvements help customers to automate the management and control of a greater array of critical assets from a single, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) platform. Known as application consolidation, this trend allows a more holistic approach to managing critical assets across the enterprise and reduces the costs associated with separate asset management systems. The addition of Maximo 7.1 to its existing asset and service management capabilities improves IBM's unique ability to deliver on the vision of application consolidation.
Maximo Asset Management 7.1 offers linear management functionality that is particularly relevant for industries that need to manage the unique attributes of linear assets. These industries include: railroads, to manage railways and signals, municipalities and state governments to manage highways and roads, utilities to manage power lines and public water pipelines, oil & gas to manage pipelines and telecommunications companies to manage cables and communications infrastructure. These industries all deal with the requirement to manage critical assets that are part of a distributed system.
In addition to the ability to manage linear assets, IBM Maximo 7.1 also offers enhanced capabilities for work management, job plans, work order tracking, service requests and reporting. These additions provide deeper asset management capabilities across the enterprise and eliminate the need for smaller systems that manage only one or two asset types.
Maximo 7.1 also provides benefits to the IT organizations that deploy the solution. Because Maximo 7.1 can reduce the number of systems required to manage enterprise assets, it can free up IT department resources for other projects. The improved user interface and system flexibility makes 7.1 configurable with no special training. The efficient data migration capabilities mean a quicker and less costly implementation process to go from development through test and into production. Lastly, advancements in managing access control provides better regulatory compliance and risk management. These combine to offer a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) for Maximo 7.1 compared with separate stand-alone asset management systems.
IBM's Maximo Asset Management portfolio includes industry solutions for the Oil & Gas, Nuclear Power, Transportation, Life Sciences, Utilities, and Government markets. In the coming quarters, these industry-specific offerings will be made available on the new Maximo 7.1 platform.
A basic version, IBM Maximo Asset Management Essentials, is available for smaller implementations that require only a subset of the asset management features included in IBM Maximo Asset Management. This version supports IBM's offerings in the Small and Medium Business (SMB) markets.
"Maximo 7.1 is the latest in Maximo's long record of industry-leading asset management solutions. The first Maximo solution was introduced more than 20 years ago, and it's been helping customers manage critical assets ever since," said Bill Sawyer, VP Maximo Operations, IBM Tivoli Software. "The additional IBM resources, in the form of developers, software engineers and industry experts, which we were able to add to the Maximo 7.1 development effort, meant delivering to our customers a more-comprehensive offering, sooner. As part of the Tivoli family of products, Maximo is part of a larger set of solutions including service management, green data centers and mobile solutions, which deliver additional business improvements. With this latest release of Maximo 7.1, IBM is building on the legacy of Maximo and its commitment to the EAM market."
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