Data migration
Prepare and reconcile your data for IBM Maximo.
MaxIron profiles source records, agrees mapping and cleansing rules, and runs repeatable migrations into IBM Maximo and MAS. Your data owners approve record scope and retention; reconciliation and operational acceptance establish whether each load is ready for use.
The migration pipeline
Every load has a source, a control and an acceptance record
MaxIron builds and runs the pipeline. Your data owners approve which records travel, how they are transformed and whether the result is ready for operational use.
Give planners and technicians information they can rely on.
Moving records is only useful when the relationships, classifications and history still support the work. We profile the source, agree transformation rules and reconcile the result, helping your data owners confirm that Maximo is ready for operational use.
Explore a SAP asset-data migration-
Stage 1
Source
Profile assets, locations, work history and attachments. Record duplicates, missing values and relationships.
Source profile
Business data owner confirms scope
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Stage 2
Mapping
Map source fields and codes to the Maximo object model. Agree retention, hierarchy and transformation rules.
Signed mapping specification
MaxIron prepares; data owner approves
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Stage 3
Validation
Apply format, reference and relationship checks. Resolve rejected records before committing the load.
Validation and exceptions report
MaxIron runs; business resolves exceptions
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Stage 4
Load
Rehearse full-volume loads in dependency order. Measure the freeze window and repeat the agreed delta load.
Load ledger and cutover runbook
MaxIron executes the approved run
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Stage 5
Reconciliation
Compare counts, relationships, balances and sampled work orders. Confirm the records support real operational tasks.
Reconciliation and acceptance pack
Business witnesses and accepts
Records selected for archive retain a documented retrieval route. The production run starts after mapping, rehearsal results and rollback criteria are accepted.
Load ledger
What crosses into Maximo, and who signed for it
Each object has a named owner, destination and signed decision. Archived records keep a documented retrieval route outside Maximo.
| What moves | From | Direction | To | Signed by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asset and location master | SAP PM | → | Maximo ASSET and LOCATIONS | Asset data owner |
| Job plans and PM schedules | Legacy CMMS | → | Maximo JOBPLAN and PM | Maintenance manager |
| Open and recent work orders | SAP PM | → | Maximo WORKORDER | Operations lead |
| Inventory items and balances | SAP MM | → | Maximo ITEM and INVENTORY | Supply chain lead |
| Attachments against live assets | Legacy document store | → | Maximo DOCLINKS | Compliance owner |
What deliberately does not travel
- Closed work history beyond the agreed retention cut-off, archived outside Maximo with a documented retrieval route
- Inventory for depots closed before the cut-off, with the balances evidenced in the archive rather than in search results
- Free-text fields no report and no user reads, proven by a query against the source rather than by opinion
- Legacy identifiers carried only out of habit. Where one is genuinely needed it is mapped to a named alternate ID field
Scope ownership
The decision register establishes migration scope before the pipeline is built. Each object has an owner, retention rule and signed mapping decision.
Open scope decisions carry an owner and a date. Their effect on volume, cleansing effort and cutover is recorded before the migration plan is accepted.
Watched, not described
Five tests you sign off before go-live
Each is run in front of the people named against it. A test nobody watched is a claim.
- DM-1
A full-volume load into a representative environment
- Passes when
- The reconciliation report ties source counts and values to what landed, object by object, including the rows deliberately excluded.
- Witnessed by
- Your data lead and platform owner
- DM-2
The second dry run, against the same rules
- Passes when
- No rejection reason appears that was not already on the list from run one.
- Witnessed by
- Programme manager
- DM-3
The first search a planner does
- Passes when
- One result, the correct parent location, the active PM attached, and recent work history visible against it.
- Witnessed by
- Two named planners, on assets they have looked after for years
- DM-4
The freeze delta
- Passes when
- Work raised while the source was read only lands with its own reconciliation, tied to the emergency work log kept by the sites.
- Witnessed by
- Cutover manager
- DM-5
Rollback, rehearsed rather than written down
- Passes when
- The rollback completes inside the time in the runbook, so the call-by time is a measured number.
- Witnessed by
- The change authority named on the window
Boundaries
Three decisions remain outside the migration team
Business owners decide retention, missing information needs a capture workstream, and platform changes use a separate window.
We do not choose what stays behind
Each option is quantified and put in front of a named person with the consequence written next to it. The choice belongs to your business owner, because the retention obligation and the operational risk do. We can frame the question; we cannot be the answer.
We do not migrate what was never captured
Cleansing corrects form, not absence. Where criticality, manufacturer or serial number is missing across a population, capturing it is a separate workstream with its own budget, and it is named at assessment.
We do not change the platform in the same window
Migration reshapes data into the Maximo model; a database vendor conversion keeps the data and changes the platform. Where both are in scope they are sequenced so only one variable moves at a time.
Maximo data migration, frequently asked questions
- Which source systems do you migrate from?
- In production: SAP PM, Oracle eAM, Maximo 5.x, 6.x and 7.6.x, IFS, in-house ERP modules, CMMS tools and spreadsheets. Mapping, record ownership, retention and reconciliation are agreed against each source before loading.
- How do you handle bad source data?
- It is measured before anything is touched: rows, null rates, duplicates and orphans per object, with twenty real records printed for each problem. A planner recognises their own bad data instantly, and the programme stops discussing tooling and starts discussing scope.
- What does archiving instead of migrating involve?
- The records stay retrievable, and not inside Maximo: a read-only copy of the source, an export into a reporting store, or a documented extract held by the business, depending on the retention obligation. The retrieval route is written into the decision before it is signed. It never means deleting data because migrating it was inconvenient.
- How does the business keep running during cutover?
- An agreed freeze window, an announced route for raising emergency work while the source is read only, a delta load with its own reconciliation, and a rollback with a call-by time in the runbook. The cutover runbook records the owner and acceptance criteria for each step.
- Where does MaxIron Data Loader fit?
- Migration pipelines are built and run by us for the length of the programme. MaxIron Data Loader is what your own team uses afterwards, when a depot closes or a bulk PM revision is needed: different job, same rule that nothing commits before it validates.
- Is this the same as a database vendor conversion?
- No. A conversion preserves the data and changes the platform underneath it; a migration reshapes different data into the Maximo model. See database vendor conversion. Where both are in scope we sequence them so only one variable changes at a time.
Review a source extract and migration scope.
Bring one representative object, its volume and retention requirements. We will identify mapping decisions, cleansing ownership and the acceptance tests needed for a rehearsal.
Bring this to the first call
- A real extract of one object, unedited, field names as they are
- Your source systems, and roughly how long each has been running
- The retention obligations you already know about
- Who can decide that something is archived rather than migrated
- The go-live date the business has already been told