The new Maximo Enterprise Suite has twice the number of applications in the existing version, the company has claimed. These include various ITIL-compliant asset management and service desk features, and the new service management module. That application is tailored for automated service level agreement management, service catalog, and escalation and notification programs.
I believe we have managed to bump the ante with the new workflow and escalation features – even against products from the likes of Remedy, which more or less wrote the book, said Chip Drapeau, president and CEO of MRO Software. He said he accepts the company will be perceived by many to be a new entrant into the IT asset management market, however, despite its pedigree.
Back in May 2002 MRO was involved in a $19m stock and cash takeover deal for control of the McLean, Virginia-based MainControl software house. MainControl was best known for its MC/EMpower product, a collection of tools used by around 200 corporations to manage laptop and desktop computers, servers, software, network equipment, and mobile devices. It was intended for asset planning, procurement, deployment, tracking, maintenance and retirement of IT asset types throughout their lifetime.
The acquisition was part of a move by Bedford, Massachusetts-based MRO to deliver a single source strategic asset management suite that included IT asset control.
Maximo, MRO Software’s asset suite has traditionally been used mostly to manage physical asset classes, including production plant, office facilities and distribution fleets, so the addition of the MainControl IT asset management package was seen as a means of broadening the reach of the company’s product portfolio to cater to all strategic enterprise assets. We have always been seen as having had a proven platform for large-scale asset management for the control of a variety of asset classes, but a few years ago we didn’t fully understand the subtleties of IT asset management, Drapeau said.
The merged product suite has been completely reengineered since, and the addition of an ITIL-based service management set has become a critical path for the company. It was a major undertaking from the perspective of application design and product development, he added. The project is expected to contribute to revenue in the second half of this year.
For the company’s second quarter ended March 31, 2005, the numbers were down slightly on the year-ago period, with total revenues for the second quarter touching $43.2m which was some 3% down compared with $44.6m for the second quarter of 2004.
The new Maximo IT Enterprise product will compete in the market with the sector mainstays of Peregrine, BMC/Remedy, and Computer Associates, not to mention Hewlett-Packard and IBM, all of which are now pushing next-generation asset management approaches and the idea of business service management underpinned by a centralized configuration management database and some type of correlation engine. I think some of the words we hear about business service management from those vendors are quite exciting, but delivery is still quite a way off, said Drapeau. MRO is no stranger to conditioning monitoring, correlation and predictive analysis of plant systems and electrical equipment. There are strong parallels with what now is being proposed for IT asset classes, he suggested.
The new Maximo Enterprise Suite started to ship at the end of March 2005. The vendor suggested an average deal size for the product would be in the region of $300,000 to $500,000. MRO has about 900 employees, and claims a customer base of 10,000.
