Maximo 7.6 to MAS 9: what really changes?
The best way I’ve found to describe a move from Maximo 7.6 to Maximo Application Suite 9 is moving house. Your furniture comes with you: your assets, work orders, inventory, workflows and years of history. But the building is new, the front door works differently, and someone has rewired the house.
It’s intuitively similar, but better. When I first started using MAS 9, the interface really impressed me, and through 9.1 and now 9.2 it has moved leaps and bounds ahead of the old 7.6 screens. The new Role Based Applications built on the Graphite framework are a real pleasure to use.
This article is the plain-English tour. It covers what stays the same, what your users will notice on day one, and what changes behind the scenes for the people who run Maximo. Later articles in the series go deeper into each area. The screenshots are from MAS 9.2.
It’s also timely. Standard support for Maximo 7.6 ended on 30 September 2025, so most 7.6 sites are now planning, or already in the middle of, their move.
Maximo is now one application in a suite
In 7.6, Maximo was the product. In MAS 9, the Maximo you know is called Maximo Manage, and it sits alongside other applications in one suite: Health, Monitor, Predict, Visual Inspection and, believe it or not, TRIRIGA, now renamed Maximo Real Estate and Facilities! They share one login, one set of users and one licence model.
You don’t need to use any of the other applications. Plenty of sites move to MAS 9 and run only Manage. But it helps to know they’re there, because they share the same front door.
A new platform underneath
Maximo 7.6 ran on an application server such as WebSphere. MAS 9 runs in containers on Red Hat OpenShift. For end users this is invisible. For the people who look after Maximo, it changes almost everything about installing, patching, administering, scaling and troubleshooting it.
The good news is that the upgrade itself keeps your data. The move takes a copy of your existing 7.6 database, and MAS upgrades it in place when Manage is first activated against it. You can upgrade directly from Maximo 7.6.1.2 or 7.6.1.3 (and 7.6.0.10), so sites on older fix packs have a small step to take first.
What stays the same
More than people expect. Your data, your organisations and sites, your workflows, escalations, domains and most automation scripts come across with the database. Most of the classic applications, such as Work Order Tracking, Item Master and Purchase Orders, still look and behave much as they did in 7.6. A planner who knows 7.6 will find their way around Manage within an hour.
What your users will notice on day one
1. A new front door, and a new password
Users now log in to the suite, not to Maximo directly. User credentials are held at suite level, so everyone needs a new password on day one unless you sign in through an existing identity provider such as LDAP. If you use electronic signatures today, every user will also need a new e-signature password, because that mechanism has been completely updated. That’s worth planning the go-live communication around.
2. A single menu down the left
Since MAS 9.1, the suite’s applications, the suite administration tools and the Manage modules share one left-hand menu, with a filter box to find applications quickly. Users will find this particularly useful if they have access to lots of applications, because they no longer need to remember which module contains which application.
3. Start centres still work, but dashboards are the future
Your existing start centres come across and still work.
MAS 9 also adds the Operational Dashboard, the modern landing page. Each role gets its own tab of KPI cards, charts, work queues, favourites and quick actions. Dashboards can be private or public, and public dashboards are shared by linking them to security groups. Better still, you can link multiple dashboards to each security group.
Dashboards don’t yet do everything start centres do. Quick insert with a ticket template and chart views on work queues are still start-centre features. Most sites will run both for a while, moving one role at a time.
4. Two styles of application, side by side
Maximo 7.6 offered around seven to nine Work Centres. Manage 9.2 has more than 12 core Role Based Applications, built on the Graphite framework, and more again if you add industry solutions or add-ons. The new Work Orders application is the best example, with saved public views, filter chips, column filters and a map view. Users are now managed at suite level, and security groups can be controlled there at a high level too, although the detailed, granular permissions still sit in the security groups inside Manage.
The classic applications are still there alongside them, so for a while your users will meet two different styles of screen, as the comparisons above show. Training has to cover both. Side-by-side comparisons like these are one of the quickest ways to help users make the jump, and they work just as well in training as they do here.
5. Maximo Anywhere and Work Centres are gone
Neither is supported in MAS 9. Field work moves to Maximo Mobile, a native app for phones and tablets, and to configurable Role Based Applications built on the Graphite framework. If your technicians use Anywhere today, plan this part of the move early, because it changes how they work every day.
6. AI you can talk to
MAS 9.1 adds the Maximo Assistant, which answers plain-English questions about assets, service requests and work orders, such as “Which service requests at my site are overdue?”. It needs the Maximo AI Service, which is licensed separately, so don’t assume every site will have it on day one.
What changes behind the scenes
This is where most of the migration effort sits. Each topic gets its own article later in the series, so here’s the one-paragraph version of each.
Users and security. Users are now created at suite level, in the suite’s Administration area, and synchronised down into Manage. Security groups now work at two levels. High-level groups can be controlled at suite level, but the detailed, granular permissions still sit in the security groups inside Manage, so expect some overlap while your team learns where each setting lives. It’s a good moment to tidy up groups and users that have built up over the years.
Licensing moves to AppPoints. MAS replaces product-by-product licences with AppPoints, a pool of points that users draw on according to their access level: self-service, limited, base or premium. Access can be authorized, where a named user holds points permanently, or concurrent, where points are only used while someone is logged in. Converting your existing 7.6 licences is a conversation to have with IBM or your business partner early, not in the final month.
Customisations. Java customisations still work, but they now have to be packaged into a customisation archive that’s deployed with Manage. Every Java class you carry forward adds effort to each future update. Many sites use the move to retire old customisations, or to rewrite them as automation scripts.
Integrations. The integration framework (MIF) and your object structures come with you. REST access uses API keys, and JMS queues still work, but Kafka is the recommended direction for new and reworked interfaces. Every interface needs to be retested end to end, including error handling, not just a single test message.
Operations. Cron tasks, reports and integrations run in their own groups of containers (“server bundles”), and logs are found through OpenShift rather than on an application server’s disk. Your support team will need new habits, and ideally some OpenShift training.
A few other things to check early:
- Databases: if your 7.6 database is on Db2 11.5, you can keep that version while you upgrade to MAS 9.2, and Db2 12 is newly supported from 9.2. For Oracle and SQL Server, check the compatibility matrix for your exact target release.
- Bing Maps and Google Maps have been deprecated as map providers, so sites using them should plan a move to ArcGIS or OpenStreetMap.
- BIRT reports still run, but every custom report is worth retesting.
Five things that catch people out
- Day-one passwords. Everyone will most likely need a new one. Tell users before go-live, and have the help desk ready.
- Two styles of screen. Classic and new applications sit side by side, so training built only on the 7.6 screens will confuse people. Train by role, on your own configured screens rather than a demo system, and show both styles.
- Mobile left too late. If technicians use Maximo Anywhere or Work Centres, the move to Maximo Mobile is a project in its own right. Start it early.
- Licences left to the end. The AppPoints conversion affects budget and who gets what access. Settle it before the technical work, not after.
- Testing only the happy path. Rehearse the full upgrade on a copy of production at least once, and test integrations, reports and role-based processes with real users.
If you remember one thing
The data moves, the platform changes, and the people need retraining. Most MAS 9 projects plan the first two carefully. The ones that go smoothly plan the third just as carefully. That third part, role-based training built on your own configuration, is the work I do through 4max.
If you’ve already made the move, what surprised you that nobody warned you about? If you haven’t yet, what worries your team most?
Join the discussion ↓No need to name your organisation. Tell us what you’ve seen, not who you saw it at.
What’s next
Part 2, Your first morning on MAS 9, looks at what your users will notice in more detail, screen by screen, so you can plan training and day-one communications. You can see all ten parts of the series, and what’s coming, on the series page.
4max builds role-based MAS 9 training on your own configuration, covering the classic and new screens side by side, in your users’ languages. Courses run instructor-led, remote or onsite, or as self-paced modules for your LMS.
Comments