IBM Tivoli User Community

Anthony Honaker
Vice President of Product Strategy, Maximo Products & Technology

Merging IT and physical assets – all under a single asset and service management banner

In today’s business environment, the line between IT and non-IT assets – and managing those assets – continues to blur. Taking advantage of that convergence can help you reduce complexity within your company and save money.

So we’re excited to let you know that our recent acquisition of MRO Software will allow us to help you increasingly manage all your assets under the banner of asset and service management. As a former Vice President for MRO Software now overseeing the Tivoli Maximo product strategy, I’d like to share some of our plans as we integrate this industry leading technology into the IBM family.

What to expect? If you’re already a Maximo customer, look for an acceleration of previously existing product roadmaps. You’ll also see us combining the best of Maximo and IBM technologies to improve on an already good thing. In addition, you can expect powerful new products for 2007 that extend asset management into new areas and industries.

Converging IT and physical assets Historically, companies have managed their IT assets as so-called front office operations. Management of facilities, transportation, production equipment and related repair and maintenance has been managed as a back office operation. Because managing all critical asset types is strategically similar, Maximo technology has led the way with products that let organizations manage all those assets together from a common service management platform. This strategy can help you streamline maintenance and operations, reduce complexity, eliminate redundancy and manage related change and compliance effectively – while also saving money.

With the MRO Software acquisition now complete, we have increased the development team’s size to help bring you previously planned Maximo software products more quickly. In 2007 we’ll also roll out a product that blends Maximo’s hardware asset management capabilities with the advanced software asset management functions gained through IBM’s recent Isogon acquisition.

You’ll also see new products and capabilities geared to specific industries, such as transportation, utilities and federal, state and local government. These will include, for example, software that can help organizations manage and maintain highways, transmission lines, piping, and other continuous or linear infrastructure elements.

Asset management as a service
In addition, Maximo asset management, applications and service desk products will integrate with the IBM Service Management platform (see linked service management slides) to deliver IT to the business as end-to-end services rather than as stacks of independent components. Service management also provides a view of what’s going on within your entire environment – mainframe and distributed – by business service to help you break away from silos, while also reducing the costs and complexity associated with problem determination.

So you’ll see the marriage of Maximo products, which excel in the planning and scheduling of human resources, with the heart of our Service Management platform: The Tivoli Change and Configuration Management Database (CCMDB). The CCMDB manages IT change across your environment while integrating with automation tools that help fulfill your business services.

New service catalog on tap
Also on the horizon for 2007: Look for introduction of a brand new service catalog product that pulls several capabilities into a single software product.

The IBM Tivoli Service Catalog will allow your organization to build, manage and publish a directory of IT and non-IT services – then let internal and other customers search for and request those services. The product will then manage fulfillment of those services, coordinating manual and automated tasks. For example, when adding a new employee, the product could let you order a laptop and other needed hardware, set up cellular phone and voice mail accounts, and add user permissions and passwords. When an employee moves to another job within the company, you can manage non-IT functions just as easily. Tivoli Service Catalog could be configured to let users order a new office set up and request that existing furniture be moved to the new location.

Branching out
For 2007, we’re also excited about the possibilities of working with outside providers to further enhance your ability to manage all enterprise assets under the banner of asset and service management .

Over the coming year, expect to hear more about the potential use of radio frequency identification (RFID) chips on vehicles and equipment to help you track those non-IT assets more effectively. We’re talking with manufacturers and others to see where that and other third-party technology can enhance our offerings.

As we progress, I think all our customers – existing and new – will be very pleased with the value we’ll continue to bring to their enterprise asset management operations.

To learn more about our plans for Maximo technology, www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/welcome/mro/answers.html

To learn more about Tivoli asset management products, visit www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/solutions/asset-management

Anthony Honaker, Vice President, Product Strategy, Tivoli Maximo Products & Technology

Anthony Honaker served as Vice President of Product Strategy for MRO Software, before taking on a similar role for IBM following its acquisition of the leading asset management company. In his 11 years with MRO, Anthony held various other positions in product strategy and management, sales support and account management. Previously, he worked for Comac Systems, another provider of Software Asset Management software, and also implemented those systems in his prior job at Toyota Motor Manufacturing. Anthony graduated from Western Kentucky University and is based near Lexington, KY.