How MAS-8 will enable Continuous Integration and Automated Deployment

Maximo^® Application Suite (MAS-8) is a market-leading asset management platform

MAS-8 combines a range of new technologies with the core Asset Management functionality, to add data-driven decision-making and AI capabilities to your business’s IBM Maximo^® installation.

As an EAM implementation project takes place, your organisation wants a flexible and reliable approach to system code changes that saves you time when upgrading and developing Maximo^®.

Fortunately, MAS-8 is based on Red Hat OpenShift – an advanced platform that has been developed with cloud-native type applications and continuous integration in mind – which means that the platform lends itself well for continuous integration and automated deployment.

The problem with a traditional development approach

Traditional development approaches often involve lengthy development cycles, followed by complex and manual deployment steps, followed by many weeks or months of manual, functional and regression testing.

This traditional approach introduces several areas of project risk. Complex manual deployment steps can be prone to human error; the manpower needed to execute each test cycle is costly; and if bugs are identified during testing, many months may have passed since the clean deployment took place, and so the consultants involved may not be easily available to fix.

Continuous integration is a term used to describe a frequent cycle of development, deployment and testing. As new areas of functionalities are developed, and new test scripts are authored, the artefacts are deployed and tested soon after the functionality has been developed.

The overhead of manual deployment and manual testing is so high however, that continuous integration is only made possible through the use of automation. Fortunately, Maximo^® Application Suite has been designed with increased AI functionality in mind.

Continuous Integration and Automated Deployment in MAS-8

Peacock Engineering uses continuous integration and automated deployment to save your organisation time and money in both new and existing Maximo^® implementations.

We have also developed the Maximo^® Automated Deployment Engine (MADE), which can be used in conjunction with Maximo^® Application Suite to deploy the version-controlled project artefacts to controlled environments in a sequence tailored specifically to the needs of each individual project.

Our automated deployment method only requires one engineer to write scripts to automate tests, and tests can be run from day one of every project. This saves time and increases quality for your business.

Furthermore, when you deploy an application through Maximo^® Application Suite, it is able to auto-scale. MAS-8 is designed for a world where you can continually release code in an agile way (a modern code environment), and MAS-8 will continue to evolve to be more capable of this kind of technology in the future.

Maximo^® Manage 8 – the core Maximo^® program, now with an improved interface –already has automatic deployment capabilities that will benefit from (and be driven by) Peacock Engineering’s existing Automated Deployment Engine tooling. MAS-8 also provides greater flexibility in terms of flexing and scaling development and test environments.

In future releases, Maximo^® Manage will take better advantage of the capabilities on offer from OpenShift – for example, moving to a truly autoscaling deployment. Therefore, if your organisation starts preparing for MAS-8 technologies now, it provides a valuable basepoint to take advantage of those capabilities in the future.

Ensuring consistency of artefact management

Peacock Engineering has invested heavily in automation since the company was founded in 2009. We have developed tools and processes that allow us to manage our configuration artefacts in a consistent way on every project.

This consistency of artefact management makes it easier for our consultants to work across different projects as needed, and is key to allowing our tools to operate smoothly.

This commitment to an automated approach will continue as our clients consider the automation possibilities provided by Maximo^® Application Suite.

How your business can benefit from MADE

Peacock Engineering have developed MADE – the Maximo^® Automated Deployment Engine – which deploys the version-controlled project artefacts to controlled environments, in a sequence tailored to the needs of each individual project. MADE can be used in conjunction with automation-based functionalities built into Maximo^® Application Suite.

The benefits of using MADE are:

Reduced risk of human error during deployment
Deployment is performed with minimal human interaction
Deployment can run out of hours
Deployment can be performed more frequently than if done manually
More frequent deployments allow the benefits of more frequent testing
Developers can unit test recent work on a clean deployment soon after developing the functionality
Regression tests can be performed sooner to identify any issues, and action taken quickly to remediate

Peacock Engineering have also made significant investment in functional test automation, which allows you to perform regression tests as soon as the deployment is completed, without incurring the cost overhead and scheduling headache of manual testing.

We perform complex deployments and lengthy regression tests, out of hours, so when we start work the next day, the test report is ready for review and any bug resolution can be prioritised ahead of any new future development.

If you would like to find out more how Maximo^® Application Suite will enable Continuous Integration and Automated Deployment in your business, then contact us on +44(0)20 3356 9629 or email info@peluk.org