From the Maximo Support Desk - Overview of IBM Internet of Things' Maximo Support, Part Five

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Part 5 - Ours Go To 11: Expanded Support and the Maximo Support Community

I am a "Level 2" Support Engineer for IBM Maximo and this is the fifth installment of a five-part series of articles that will give you an overview of the Maximo application support environment.  These articles are based on a presentation that has been given by the Maximo L2 Support Manager, Thomas Aaron.  In this part of the series I will add onto the previous article's discussion about additional support processes and resources by showing you some very helpful links and resources to even further enhance the value of your Maximo support experience.

IBM Software Accelerated Value Program (AVP)

This is a common Maximo offering, whereby you will recieve regular and dedicated assistance from an Accelerated Value Leader (AVL).  Your AVL is your single point of contact and will manage, expedite, and facilitate the communication between you and IBM support, development, and management resources at IBM.  Your Accelerated Value Specialist (AVS) is an IBM support resource that is like having a singular support engineer for your PMRs, who will manage them either solely, or in concert with IBM L2 support engineers.  Your AVS can also proactively recommend and assist with product updates or upgrades.  There are also additional or tiered services available within the AVP program such as on-site visits, emergency on-site visits, focused, or customized webinars and knowledge sharing activities.  This type of support can be a proactive type of support, rather than only being a reactive support experience - we anticipate your needs, and advise on the best solutions, while acting in the client’s interests to bring the power of the broader IBM to serve the client business requirements.  One of the core goals and benefits of this program is to accelerate the time-to-value window, thereby improving productivity and the economics behind the client purchase and implementation of Maximo.

Social Media
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/servicemanagement/am/index.html

Service Management Connect (also known as developerworks) is a portal to our online support communities.  The various product and subject-specific communities are interactive forums for IBM clients and IBM support and development engineers, as well as an informational resource.  You may also share product technical information based on your expertise and experience. Choose the Forms, blogs and social media link under Tools and resources to access an aggregated view of social media related to the selected product. You can join forums, blogs, and wikis. You can also take the opportunity to join user groups. They often offer meetings with relevant presentations, as well as virtual webcasts and additional community participation. (search for #supmax for blogs that the Maximo support team wrote)

Product Enhancement Requests

You can read about this component in one of my other articles from my continuous series, "From the Maximo Support Desk":

From The Maximo Support Desk - We Have A Suggestion Box

LinkedIn and other public internet forums
*Please be aware that there are countless social media outlets such as forums, blogs, and published video material that are not affiliated with IBM, and it's possible that the content on a non-IBM source of material may not be accurate or reflective of IBM.  I am personally a member of LinkedIn, mostly because I have found a lot of earnest IBM Maximo users who post informative and interesting material there.  Again, this is my personal opinion and IBM is not affiliated with LinkedIn, nor does IBM monitor the content to my knowledge.

User Groups

There are several regional-based and industry-based Maximo Users Groups all over the world and many of them host events that range from a half-day seminars to a multi-day conferences.  User Group events typically feature experts from the User community and IBM support and product management speakers.  Maximo User Groups are not affiliated with IBM, but IBM often participates in the events by presenting relevant topics or conducting informational sessions.  We feel it is important to reach out to our users and meet the customers that we support, when we can!  You can search for a User Group in your area, or a Maximo discussion group online.

On Demand and Ad-hoc Premium Support

We have also just introduced the "IBM Support Value Add Offerings" program.  We're excited to announce the immediate availability of our Digital Store. A collection of short-term value-added support engagements with predefined deliverables available for purchase in the US and UK.  Customers can purchase these engagements on demand 7x24 through a credit card or PO. Offerings are currently available for Watson IoT (Maximo), as well as for Analytics Solutions (IBM Now Factory, SPM, Cognos TM1), Cloud (ITNM, Netcool and TSAMP)  and IBM i.  We are looking forward to working with our clients to bring more IoT and Maximo offerings to our digital store. To see if there is currently a specific offering that would benefit your site, visit the link to the Digital Stores:

For United States: http://ibm.biz/ValueaddUS  For United Kingdom:  http://ibm.biz/valueaddUK

Finally, please know that from the L2 support engineers to the executive management of IBM, we are committed to providing world class support!

For your further enjoyment, please see the other articles in this series, "Overview of IBM Internet of Things' Maximo Support":

Part One - The Scope, Scale, and People of Support
Part Two - Care and Feeding of your Maximo product: Maintenance, Fixes, Patches
Part Three - Severity, Response, and Engineer Engagement
Part Four - Additional Support Process and Resources

Thank you for reading this series, and perhaps I will have the opportunity to speak to you personally during your Maximo support experience!

Tom Richardson is an IBM Maximo Support Engineer and frequent contributor to the Asset Management Blog community.  For a complete index of links to his articles, visit
Index of articles by Tom Richardson, Support Engineer