Learn what IBM’s Pam Denny and Tristan O'Gorman have to say about the strategy, roadmap and technology alignment for Maximo Anywhere and Work Centers.

For today's workforce, mobile devices are no longer novel. As mobile devices, and especially smartphones, have taken over our personal lives, workers have come to expect that they can also use their mobile devices to do their jobs more efficiently.

Leading organisations have identified this trend towards mobility. They are increasingly leveraging mobile devices to capture and validate data at the source, enforce business processes and provide their people with real-time access to information anytime, anywhere.

This trend is also driven by new and ever-improving mobile solutions like IBM's Maximo Anywhere and Work Centers.

I recently had the opportunity to talk to Pam Denny, Offering Manager for Maximo Anywhere, and Tristan O'Gorman, Product Architect within the Maximo team. I asked them about IBM's approach to mobility, the modernisation of Maximo, and how IBM is supporting their customers' digital transformation journeys with the Anywhere and Work Center solutions. Here is what I learned.

What is IBM’s Maximo strategy for a “good” mobile user experience?

Pam explained that the Maximo user experience is changing significantly to meet the evolving needs of the many different users. The use of the mobile products, in particular, is changing rapidly, with more and more people moving from pen and paper to tablets and smartphones to access Maximo Anywhere or Work Centres. The mobile solutions are designed to enable workers to access information anytime, anywhere as well as to allow organisations to capture critical data from individual users.

Tristan expanded on this by pointing out the efforts being taken, especially around Work Centres, to address a specific problem many asset intensive organisations are facing: The generational shift in the workforce. As many of the most experienced workers are getting close to retirement age, organisations are replacing these workers with younger, less skilled workers who need more support and access to information, and who expect more intuitive user experiences when it comes to dealing with technology.

So you can see, IBM is very much focused on providing great user experiences by putting the user and their needs at the centre of their design and strategy work.

In regards to the product roadmap, what can we expect over the next 12 months with Work Centers and Maximo Anywhere?

Both Pam's and Tristan's answers made it clear we can expect a lot. Pam says a very exciting release for Anywhere is planned for Q1 of 2020. The key goal of this release is to simplify Anywhere and make it more user-friendly, which has been a request from many users. The other two areas of focus are also addressing frequent customer requests. They are about the retainment of investment made in the platform and the ability to grow its usage and application across the business.

It was great to see Pam so excited about this upcoming release, and I certainly feel like it has the potential to make a big difference to many of our Maximo Anywhere customers here in Australia and New Zealand.

While a more established product, things are looking equally exciting for Work Centers. Tristan explained that the roadmap for 2020 sees them invest in existing functionality around work execution, work supervision, inspections, service requests and other popular areas. We will also see a maturation of the UI framework in 2020, which will result in much faster Work Centers and more capabilities in and around the configurations.

As a third point, Tristan also pointed out that we can expect to see a better alignment between Anywhere and Work Centers to ultimately give clients a much richer set of choices.

So overall, we can expect to see some significant developments coming our way on both the Anywhere and the Work Center front.

Since a critical element of both products is the ability to access Maximo on mobile devices, I was also keen to get a better understanding of the current and planned technology alignment between the two.

Is there a technology alignment between Anywhere and Work Centers?

Pam explained to me that the team is certainly thinking about how they can bring all the Maximo mobile products on the same technology platform. The main goal of this would be to make it easier for clients, business partners and IBM themselves to administer and maintain the solution, and to continue to deliver more and more features and functionality.

Pam expects that over the coming years, we will increasingly hear about a technology convergence as well as continued investment into both platforms.

As someone who has been involved in mobile for a long time now, I find it very exciting to hear about this planned convergence of technologies that will continue to make it easier to take Maximo out into the field and access it anytime, anywhere.