Every Infor EAM customer I speak to lately opens with the same worry, phrased three different ways: is my platform still being invested in, who actually owns it now, and should I be planning a move to Maximo before I get forced into one? Those are fair questions, and they deserve a straight answer rather than a vendor pitch. This is a comparison written for the incumbent under pressure, from someone who implements both products and has no product to sell you.
The roadmap question every Infor EAM customer is asking
Let me set the facts out plainly, because the rumour mill has run ahead of reality. Infor sold its EAM business to Hexagon in 2021, and it was rebranded HxGN EAM. In 2026 Hexagon spun its software division into an independent company, and the product is now marketed under that new owner. The Infor website itself still points EAM enquiries at the product page as "HxGN EAM (formerly Infor EAM)." Through all of that, existing customers were not cut off, not forced to migrate, and the product has continued to ship releases and support.
So the honest position, verified as of the date on this page, is this: the product you bought is alive, supported, and under active development. What has changed is the badge on the box and the strategic direction of whoever owns it this quarter. That matters for a five-year decision, but it is not the same thing as discontinuation, and anyone telling you the platform is dead is either guessing or selling. I would not make an irreversible migration decision on a naming change.
The real question under the roadmap question
"Is it being discontinued?" is almost never the right question. The right one is: does the owner's direction still match where my organisation is going over the next five years, and what does it cost me to be wrong? That reframes an anxious yes/no into a cost and risk comparison you can actually manage.
For background on where each platform sits, I have written plain introductions to IBM Maximo and to Hexagon EAM. Read those if you want the product tours. Here I am comparing the two on the four dimensions that decide a stay-or-move call: configurability, upgrade burden, mobile, and the cost of staying versus moving.
Configurability: how far each product bends
Infor EAM earned its loyal base by being pragmatic. Screen designer, user-defined fields, flexible business rules, and a data model you can extend without a developer in the room. Most Infor installations I see are lighter-touch by design: teams stood the system up, configured what they needed, and left it close to standard. That is a strength, not a criticism. It keeps the platform maintainable.
Maximo bends further, and that is the trade. Application Designer, automation scripting, escalations, workflow, and conditional expressions give you an enormous amount of reach without dropping to code. The danger is that the reach invites over-building. A Maximo instance that has been configured by every department for a decade can become its own worst maintenance liability. The discipline that keeps this healthy is knowing where configuration ends and customisation begins, which I cover in detail in Maximo configuration vs customisation.
The practitioner summary: if your Infor EAM setup is close to standard and does the job, Maximo's extra configurability is a solution to a problem you may not have. If you are constantly hitting walls in Infor and writing workarounds outside the system, Maximo's depth starts to earn its keep.
Upgrade burden
A lighter configuration footprint pays off most visibly at upgrade time. Infor EAM customers who stayed near standard tend to have gentler upgrades, because there is less bespoke behaviour to regression test. This is the quiet advantage of the lighter-touch culture, and it is a real reason many Infor customers are content.
Maximo upgrades are heavier in proportion to how much you have configured and customised. A near-standard Maximo upgrade is manageable; a deeply customised one is a project with its own budget line. The move to the newer containerised Maximo Application Suite added platform modernisation on top of application upgrade, which is powerful but not free. If low upgrade effort is a core requirement for you, that weighs in favour of staying where you are rather than adopting a platform with more surface area to maintain.
Mobile in the field
Both platforms have made mobile a first-class concern, because that is where technicians actually work. Infor EAM's mobile story is competent and, in keeping with the product's character, straightforward to deploy for standard maintenance flows: work orders, inspections, meter readings, parts issue from a phone or tablet.
Maximo's mobile offering is broader and more configurable, with disconnected operation and richer field workflows, which suits large distributed workforces and remote sites with poor connectivity. As with configurability, breadth is the differentiator and also the cost. If your field requirement is standard maintenance execution, both cover it. If you need heavy offline capability across thousands of technicians, Maximo's mobile depth is a genuine reason to look. Do not migrate a whole platform for a mobile feature, though; price the mobile module in isolation first.
The data model difference that costs the most
This is the section I most want incumbent Infor customers to read, because it is where migration budgets quietly explode. The two products structure the world differently, and the gap is not cosmetic.
| Dimension | Infor EAM (now HxGN EAM) | IBM Maximo |
|---|---|---|
| Top-level structure | Flatter, organisation / entity driven, fewer mandatory layers | Organisation → Site → asset, layered by design |
| Where security is scoped | Often by group and record, lighter partitioning | Org and Site partition data and drive security throughout |
| Multi-site data sharing | Flexible, less rigidly enforced by the structure | Set-level sharing (item sets, company sets) tied to org/site |
| Typical hierarchy depth | Shallower in most installs I see | Deeper, with site context threaded through nearly every record |
| Configuration reach | Broad and accessible, kept near standard by culture | Very deep, requires governance to stay maintainable |
| What breaks on migration | Assumes fewer structural constraints | Forces org/site decisions onto data that never had them |
Here is the practitioner detail that migration proposals routinely underplay. Infor EAM installations are usually lighter-touch and their owners think of a move as a data load: export the assets, import them, done. It is not. Maximo's organisation and site security model will force you to redesign your entire asset hierarchy, because site context is threaded through security, work management, inventory sets, and reporting. Data that lived happily in a flatter Infor structure now has to be assigned a place in a layered model that did not exist in the source system.
The expensive part is not the data load
The costly, slow, error-prone work in an Infor EAM to Maximo migration is the hierarchy and security redesign, not moving records. Any proposal that quotes you a migration price built mainly on record counts has mispriced the job. Ask specifically who is designing your org/site model and how many workshops that takes, then judge the number.
A migration-cost estimate framework
I do not trust single-number migration quotes, so I break the cost into lines and weight them. Use this framework to sanity-check any proposal. The weights are indicative of what I see in practice, not a fixed formula, and they will shift with your size and how customised the source system is.
| Cost line | Main driver | Relative weight |
|---|---|---|
| Hierarchy & security redesign | Org/site model workshops, mapping the flat structure into layers | Heaviest |
| Configuration rebuild | Rebuilding fields, rules, workflows in the target | High |
| Integration rebuild | ERP, finance, IoT, and reporting interfaces re-pointed | High |
| Data extract, cleanse & load | Record volume and data quality | Moderate |
| Change management & training | Retraining every technician on a new model | Moderate |
| Parallel run & cutover | Running both systems during transition | Moderate |
| Contingency | Discovery of undocumented Infor behaviour | Plan 15 to 25 percent |
Notice what sits at the top. The two heaviest lines, hierarchy redesign and configuration rebuild, are effort and design work, not licence or data volume. That is why a migration that looks affordable on a licence comparison can double once the redesign is scoped honestly. Get those two lines estimated by someone who has done an Infor-to-Maximo move before you commit to anything.
A five-year risk register for buyers
If you are evaluating Infor EAM on a five-year horizon, weigh the risks of staying and the risks of moving side by side. Both columns have entries. A one-sided register is a sales tool, not an assessment.
| Risk | Likelihood | Impact | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owner direction drifts from your industry needs | Medium | High | Track the roadmap quarterly; get direction commitments in writing at renewal |
| Rebranding churn erodes internal confidence | Medium | Low | Separate the badge from the product; brief stakeholders on the facts |
| Specialist skills get harder to hire | Low to Medium | Medium | Secure a support partner; document your configuration now |
| Migrating to Maximo overruns on hierarchy redesign | High if underscoped | High | Price the redesign explicitly before committing (see framework above) |
| Staying leads to a deferred, forced move later | Low | Medium | Keep an exit plan warm; avoid deep, undocumented customisation |
| Integration debt grows on either platform | Medium | Medium | Keep interfaces standard and documented regardless of vendor |
The row I would highlight is the migration overrun. It is the highest-impact, most-underestimated risk in the whole exercise, and it sits on the move side of the ledger, not the stay side. That asymmetry is exactly why so many Infor customers who run the numbers honestly decide the safer play is to stay and strengthen.
When staying put is the right call
I will say plainly what a vendor never will: for a large share of Infor EAM customers, the right decision is to stay. Here are the cases where I would recommend it without hesitation.
- Your configuration is near standard and the system does its job. You are getting the light upgrade path and low maintenance that made Infor attractive. Moving to Maximo trades that away for reach you are not using.
- Your asset structure is genuinely flat. If a single-site or lightly partitioned model fits your operation, forcing your data into Maximo's org/site layering is cost without benefit.
- You have no burning capability gap. If you cannot name a specific thing Infor EAM will not do that is hurting you, migration is anxiety-driven, not need-driven.
- Your integrations are stable. Rebuilding working ERP and finance interfaces is pure risk when the current ones are fine.
- The product remains supported and on a credible roadmap. Verified today, it is. Revisit that judgement each quarter rather than acting on a rumour.
If you are staying, do it deliberately. Document your configuration, keep integrations standard, secure a support relationship, and keep a thin exit plan on the shelf. Staying put is a strategy when it is chosen and maintained, not when it is just inertia.
The opposite case, where I would seriously evaluate Maximo, is narrow: you have a concrete capability gap Infor cannot close, a genuinely complex multi-org multi-site operation that suits Maximo's model, deep reliability or linear-asset needs, and the budget and appetite to fund the hierarchy redesign properly. If three or four of those are true, the move can be worth it. If only one is, it usually is not.
The verdict, and a note on independence
Maximo and Infor EAM are both serious enterprise asset management platforms, and the ownership shuffle around Infor EAM changed the badge more than it changed the product. Configurability, upgrade burden, and mobile all follow the same pattern: Maximo goes deeper and broader, and pays for that depth in maintenance and upgrade effort, while Infor EAM's lighter-touch character is a real, underrated advantage for teams that stayed near standard. The single biggest hidden cost in any migration is the org/site hierarchy redesign, not the data load. Price that honestly and many stay-or-move decisions answer themselves.
My default recommendation for a content, near-standard Infor EAM customer is to stay, document, and review quarterly. My recommendation for a customer with a concrete gap and a complex multi-site operation is to evaluate Maximo with the redesign cost fully scoped. There is no universal answer, and anyone offering you one has not looked at your hierarchy.
Independence and currency
I am not a reseller or partner of IBM, Hexagon, Infor, or their successor entities, and I earn nothing from which platform you pick. Product names, ownership, and support status in this space have changed more than once and will change again. The facts here are verified as of the date under the title; treat any specific naming or roadmap claim as needing a fresh check before you act, and recheck quarterly.
The canonical product pages are the right place to confirm current status: IBM Maximo and Infor EAM .
Written by Muhammad Abbas
CMMS / CAFM Manager & Enterprise Integration Specialist · 22+ years across ERP, EAM, CAFM and enterprise integration.
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