IBM’s Tivoli Software Group is developing 11 asset management applications under the Maximo brand that are aimed at consolidating how manufacturing, IT, and fleet-based assets are maintained, with distinct versions for various industry sectors.

Due at the end of the year, the offerings — based on IBM Maximo Asset Management 7.1, which was released in May — will include versions for the government, oil & gas, nuclear power, transportation, life sciences, and utilities sectors. The remainder of the new portfolio will include functional versions, such as Maximo for Service Providers, Maximo for Mobile, a configuration manager, a calibration manager, and a GIS-based spatial version, all of which IBM said will offer greater control over management while increasing asset reliability.

Managing Automation has also learned that IBM is in the early stages of mapping the integration between technologies from recent acquisition Cognos and Maximo to help customers improve their asset reliability.

Currently, Maximo 7’s reporting tools are based on the open source Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) software, which is managed by the Eclipse Foundation, an independent open source community. Cognos, which provides services-oriented architecture (SOA)-enabled business intelligence and performance management software, will add a deeper layer of visibility into operational assets, officials said.

“The plan is to tie Maximo into Cognos and other Tivoli products so that the C-level executive can have a concept of what is going on across the whole organization,” Don Busiek, manager of Maximo product strategy in IBM’s Tivoli Software Group, told Managing Automation yesterday in an exclusive interview.

IBM has already leveraged Maximo’s SOA infrastructure, including its workflow management engine, in Tivoli’s network, security, and application management capabilities for processes such as tracking jobs, work orders, and service requests, the company said. Because both Maximo and Cognos technologies are built on an SOA foundation, it makes sense to tie these tools together as well, industry observers said.

Houghton Leroy, research director at ARC Advisory Group, said the marriage of Maximo and Cognos could help customers “understand what is the return on assets, total cost of ownership, or do a failure analysis [to help] with a continuous improvement strategy. Companies that tend to be leaders in their industry are focused on reliability-centered maintenance, and that requires a lot of analysis.”

IBM bought MRO Software, the maker of Maximo, in 2006. A year later, Al Zollar, general manager of IBM’s Tivoli Software group, said the company would work to consolidate asset management and create a holistic approach that allows all assets — from computers to fleets — to be managed in the same way. One example of the fruits of that development work is the addition of asset management capabilities for linear asset, such as pipelines,

The overarching goal is to help customers understand how interconnected an organization actually is. “Every device has the potential to affect another device,” said Tivoli’s Busiek. “Asset convergence gives you the ability to manage the downstream effect of changes.”

That’s where applications like the forthcoming configuration manager can help, as it will automatically send updates when changes to assets have been made — for example, after a software upgrade.

In addition, the new industry-specific Maximo versions will address the distinct problems of process and discrete industries.

“It makes sense,” ARC’s Leroy said. “If I’m in the semiconductor industry, I have different problems than a person running an oil refinery. There’s a different set of assets, different lifecycle issues, different technology skills … you want to make sure the solution you are spending your money on deals properly with those types of issues.”