Cloud Computing: Enterprise Asset Management as a Service

Enterprise Asset Management as a Service
Enterprise asset management is the business processes and enabling information systems that support the management of an organization’s assets, both physical (such as buildings, equipment, infrastructure, etc.) and non-physical.

Most of the large organizations in manufacturing, utilities, and health care industries have a complete dependence on their assets for the day-to-day operations. These assets cannot afford any downtime, since downtime means lost production cycles, loss of market and loss of customer satisfaction.

Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) systems aim to provide a platform for connecting people, processes, assets, industry-based knowledge and decision support capabilities based on quality information. EAM provides a holistic view of an organization’s asset base, enabling managers to control and optimize their operations for quality and efficiency.

How EAM Fits a BpaaS/SaaS Model

• Highly Standardized Solution Across Enterprises: The core building blocks and functionalities of an EAM application is fairly standard across organizations within an industry vertical and even across the industry vertical, making it a good candidate for a BpaaS model. It’s already a popular business process in the packaged software segment.

• Collaborative in Nature: Enterprise Asset Management functionality requires interaction with multiple internal and external stakeholders, and hence a centrally hosted platform like cloud will support collaboration much better. For example, EAM consists of work management for maintenance activities, service management, procurement management and contract management. These processes involve multiple internal and external stakeholders.

• Dynamic Scalability Will Be of Benefit: An entire suite of EAM aims at optimum utilization of manpower and resources, decreasing the operating costs and improving work efficiency. These goals align well with the cloud computing goals of on-demand access and dynamic scalability and reducing the capital and operational expenses.

• Compliance Needs: Mandatory compliance needs from federal and local governments fit a SaaS model, since custom development of compliance solutions typically have long development cycles in environment and have a risk of not meeting them .

BpaaS Players for EAM
Much like my earlier article on BpaaS for Chemical Inventory Management, we find several players are already providing the Enterprise Asset Management as a Service. As mentioned already, the goal of this series is to promote the adoption of Business Process as a Service but not really to evaluate individual vendors or rank them. Enterprises are requested to follow their own evaluation processes on these vendors and choose the best one.

CMMS / EMS as BpaaS from eMaint
A CMMS software package maintains a computer database of information about an organization’s maintenance operations, i.e., CMMS – computerized maintenance management system. This information is intended to help maintenance workers do their jobs more effectively (for example, determining which machines require maintenance and which storerooms contain the spare parts they need) and to help management make informed decisions (for example, calculating the cost of machine breakdown repair versus preventive maintenance for each machine, possibly leading to better allocation of resources). CMMS data may also be used to verify regulatory compliance. CMMS packages can produce status reports and documents giving details or summaries of maintenance activities and trends. A CMMS is a vital component of an Enterprise Asset Management system as it helps you optimize your maintenance resources and improve your return on assets.

eMaint’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution is subscription-based and accessible from eMaint’s website. The pricing model includes a Hosted SaaS Model with automated backups and the vendor claims transparent updates and upgrades to the system without impacting the end users.

Further information about this offering can be obtained from the vendor site, http://www.emaint.com/saas/

CMMS/ EMS Solutions from SaasMaint.com
Saasmaint Essentials is an easy-to-use, web-based maintenance management solution delivered through a low-cost, subscription-based model. Saasmaint Essentials delivers robust functionality including asset management, preventive maintenance, work management, and inventory management.

Saasmaint Enterprise is a single integrated solution for multiple, geographically dispersed sites. Saasmaint Enterprise incorporates all the capabilities of Saasmaint Essentials while adding project management, budgeting, inspections, outage scheduling, and many more features needed to enable maintenance management best practices.

These offering are available as a SaaS model with a subscription-based pricing and solution. Further information about the offering can be obtained from the vendor site: http://www.saasmaint.com/pricing.html

Summary
As mentioned in the beginning part of this series, the aim is to identify the areas within the enterprise business process that can be served using a SaaS/BpaaS model.

The following articles have already been created under this scope:

• Chemical Inventory Management As A Service – Part I
• Chemical Inventory Management As A Service – Part 2
• BpaaS Interoperability As A Service

It’s always difficult to cover every other offering under Enterprise Asset Management category in one article, also as mentioned the aim is not to rank the providers, if any other important offering under Enterprise Asset Management is missing please write to me to cover them in upcoming articles.