Licensing
Where the AppPoints go, on one worked estate.
AppPoints follow how your people work rather than how many of them there are. Below is a four-site utility with 400 badges taken apart line by line: which lines carry the consumption, who decides each one today, and what has to be true before a distribution becomes a quote.
The worked estate
Estate A, specified before anything is counted
Estate A is a four-site regional utility with 400 badges in maintenance and operations, moving from Maximo 7.6 to MAS Manage and Maximo Mobile on a three-year term, with Health and Monitor named on the year-three roadmap.1 Of the 400, roughly 60 plan and schedule in the system all day, 240 close assigned jobs from a phone at an asset, 90 approve or supervise a few times a week, and 10 only ever open a report. Behind them sit six environments, two of them clones refreshed monthly, one disaster-recovery instance, and four interfaces to finance, GIS, SCADA and the identity provider.
That paragraph is the whole input to a sizing exercise, and it is deliberately about behaviour rather than about headcount. AppPoints are pooled at suite level and consumed at different rates by different applications and user types, so the split between daily, mobile, occasional and read-only use moves the commercial answer further than the total number of people does.2 The interfaces matter for the same reason: where a large volume of human activity reaches the system through a small number of technical accounts, IBM publishes guidance on how that is treated, and the answer for your estate comes from your own Licence Information rather than from us.3
What follows is Estate A taken apart: where the consumption sits, who decides each line today, and the four gates a distribution passes before it becomes a quote worth signing.
Sources and caveats
- 1 Estate A is illustrative: the shape this method produces on a four-site utility of that size.
- 2 The AppPoints model, including how it differs between customer-managed MAS and MAS as a Service, is set out in our guide to Maximo licensing models, AppPoints, perpetual and subscription.
- 3 IBM documents non-production instances, install-based charges for certain components and connectors, and indirect access. Your licence agreement and Licence Information are the authoritative source, and published guidance is supplementary.
Line by line
Six lines, and who decides each one today
The right-hand note under each line is the finding. On Estate A, the two largest lines are set by a maintenance manager and a planning lead, and neither of them attends the licence meeting.
Share of AppPoints consumption modelled for Estate A over a three-year term
-
240 mobile job closers, one app each, in the field daily
30%
Decided today by: The maintenance manager who decides whether technicians close their own jobs or hand paper to a planner
-
60 planners and schedulers, full suite access all day
26%
Decided today by: The planning lead, and nobody in procurement
-
Six environments, one disaster-recovery instance, two monthly clones
18%
Decided today by: IT operations, on a release and testing argument made years before the licence conversation
-
Health and Monitor on the year-three roadmap
15%
Decided today by: The reliability engineering sponsor, whose successful pilot triggers it
-
90 supervisors and approvers, a few actions a week
8%
Decided today by: The operations directorate, through a delegation of authority nobody has revisited
-
Four interfaces and their service accounts, 10 reporting-only users
3%
Decided today by: The integration team, in tickets, one interface at a time
Procurement owns the negotiation and decides none of the top four lines. That is why the sizing conversation has to start in the maintenance office rather than in the commercial one.
Shares are illustrative for an estate of this shape, rounded, and not an IBM ratio. No AppPoints total and no price is stated here because neither survives contact with your Licence Information. The model is set out in our guide to Maximo licensing models, AppPoints, perpetual and subscription.
The number that gets quoted, and the number that decides
Four hundred badges, four commercial shapes
400
Badges in maintenance and operations, the figure offered in the first meeting
4
Consumption patterns those badges resolve into once usage is measured
Sizing all 400 at the tier that covers everything anyone might do is the safe answer in a workshop and the expensive one across a three-year term. The split between daily, mobile, occasional and read-only use moves the commercial answer further than the headcount does.
Both figures describe Estate A, the illustrative estate specified above. The transferable point is the split, not the numbers.
From distribution to quote
Four gates, and who signs each one
A sizing that clears all four is one your procurement team can defend at a renewal. A sizing that clears two is a sales artefact.
-
Gate 1 Behaviour is measured, not asserted
Signed by Your maintenance manager and planning lead
Passes
A fortnight of real usage: who was in the system daily, who closed jobs from a phone, who approved once, who only ran a report.
Held back
An org chart, a headcount, or a workshop show of hands. On Estate A the difference is a 240-person line item.
-
Gate 2 Every ratio names its source
Signed by Your software asset management owner
Passes
A workbook where each ratio cites the IBM publication and the date it came from, so your software asset management owner can check it against your Licence Information.
Held back
A ratio nobody can source. Ask any partner, including us, and treat an unanswered question as a finding.
-
Gate 3 The quiet consumers are in the first draft
Signed by Your IT operations and integration leads
Passes
Non-production, disaster recovery, clones, install-based components, connectors and the service accounts carrying human activity, counted before the business case is written.
Held back
Discovering them in hypercare. On Estate A those lines are 21% of consumption, decided by two teams who were not in the licence meeting.
-
Gate 4 The route is chosen on your evidence, not our margin
Signed by Your procurement lead, with our recommendation in writing
Passes
A written recommendation on buying direct or through MaxIron, decided on whether you already hold an enterprise IBM relationship, a capable SAM function and predictable consumption.
Held back
A recommendation that only ever points at the reseller. Going direct is sometimes the cleaner answer for you.
Run this before you negotiate
Six statements, in order. Stop at the first one that is false.
Every statement is about facts you hold rather than about anything we do.
- 1
You can state, from usage data rather than from memory, how many of your technicians closed their own jobs last fortnight.
- 2
You have a year-three module list, not only a go-live one, including any industry solution or add-on already demonstrated to a director.
- 3
You can count your environments today: production, non-production, clones, disaster recovery and any test factory.
- 4
You know which interfaces carry human activity, and which service accounts sit behind them.
- 5
Someone in your organisation holds the current agreement and Licence Information, and you can name them.
- 6
You know the term you are negotiating and the renewal date you are working back from.
If you stopped early
The statement you stopped at is the measurement to do first, and a fortnight of usage data from the estate you run today is cheaper than a mid-term correction.
If every statement held
You have the whole input to a sizing exercise. Send it and we will return a first-pass distribution against it, with the source named beside every ratio.
Limits of this advice
Three limits on licensing advice
Licensing is where confident vagueness does the most damage, so these are the boundaries we work inside.
Your agreement and Licence Information carry the authority
IBM states that your licence agreement and Licence Information are the authoritative source and that published guidance is supplementary. Our workbook traces every ratio to a named IBM publication and its date, and your software asset management owner signs alignment against your own part numbers. That function keeps its role.
No price appears on this page, and none should
Indicative figures vary by country and by deployment pattern, and the model differs between customer-managed MAS and MAS as a Service. What this page gives you instead is which facts move the number most, so you know what to measure before you negotiate. Ask for the workbook first, then the quote.
We hold the reseller authorisation, so read the page knowing it
MaxIron is an IBM Gold Partner and can transact MAS licences, which is an obvious incentive. Where you already have an enterprise IBM relationship, a capable SAM function and predictable consumption, going direct is often cleaner and we say so in writing. That costs us the licence margin and less than a sizing that fails at first renewal.
MAS AppPoints licensing, frequently asked questions
- What are AppPoints in IBM MAS?
- AppPoints are the entitlement currency for the IBM Maximo Application Suite. Applications such as Manage, Mobile, Health, Monitor, Predict, Visual Inspection and Scheduler consume them at different rates, and user types consume different amounts. Because they are pooled at suite level, right-sizing depends on your user mix and module footprint rather than on a sticker price.
- Do non-production environments and interfaces count?
- They can, and this is where sizing most often goes wrong. IBM publishes guidance on non-production instances, on install-based charges for certain components and connectors, and on indirect access, which covers the case where a lot of human activity reaches the system through a few technical accounts. On the worked estate above those lines are 21% of consumption. The definitive answer for your estate comes from your Licence Information.
- BYOL or buy through a reseller?
- Both are valid. Buying direct works well where you already hold an enterprise IBM relationship, a capable software asset management function and predictable consumption. A partner transaction makes sense where you want one commercial relationship covering licences, implementation and managed services. We hold IBM reseller authorisation for the suite and put the recommendation in writing either way, including when it is to go direct.
- Do you publish MAS prices?
- No. Figures vary by country and by deployment pattern, and the model differs between customer-managed MAS and MAS as a Service. A number given before the user mix, module roadmap, environment count and term are on the table would not survive procurement. Ask for the workbook first, then the quote.
- What about our existing Maximo 7.6 licences?
- We assess three options with their licence implications set out separately: renew on 7.6 under Maximo 7.6 Extended Support, move to MAS under a MAS upgrade, or run both in parallel through a phased migration. Sizing runs alongside the deployment decision so the commercial picture matches the plan rather than a diagram.
Bring a fortnight of who did what.
Not your org chart. Real usage from the estate you run today, however rough. We return a first-pass distribution in the shape above, name the assumption that moves the number most, and say whether buying through a partner is the right route for you at all.
Bring this to the first call
- A fortnight of real usage: daily users, mobile job closers, occasional approvers, report-only users
- The go-live module list and the year-three one, including any industry solution or add-on
- Your environment count: production, non-production, clones, disaster recovery, test factories
- The interfaces that carry human activity, and the service accounts behind them
- Your existing agreement and Licence Information, or the name of the person who holds them
- The term you are negotiating and the renewal date you are working back from