Planon versus IBM Maximo Real Estate and Facilities

Where they overlap

Verified capability coverage is close across the portfolio half of the scope. Both products have verified asset registers, work orders, preventive maintenance, space management, property and lease operations, procurement, reporting and multi-site portfolio handling. Both have verified IoT capability: Planon through Connect for Building Advisor, which turns building automation data into action, and IBM through connected IoT data. Both handle dual-standard lease accounting, Planon covering FASB and IASB treatment and IBM offering lease creation and accounting with journal entries alongside AI powered lease abstraction that extracts dates, financial terms and clauses from lease documents.

Where they differ on verified evidence

Planon has the broader verified footprint. All fifteen capabilities tracked in this directory are verified for Planon, including FM helpdesk through Facility Service Management, SLA and contract management, vendor and warranty management, health and safety inspections, a mobile field capability and bidirectional OpenBIM integration. For IBM, five of the same fifteen could not be verified from published sources: FM helpdesk, SLA management, contractor management, inspections and BIM. That is not the same as absence. IBM documents CAD, including CAD user roles and drawing management, and refers to a requesters role, but neither BIM nor a named helpdesk module is stated, so this directory records them as unverified.

If you run outsourced FM against contractual service levels, that evidence gap matters commercially. The SLA structure you need to encode is the thing you should be demonstrating in the demo rather than assuming, and SLA matrix design for FM operations sets out what to ask for.

Deployment and integration

IBM is the clearer answer on deployment. Cloud, on premises and hybrid are all verified, and IBM offers three distinct commercial routes: AWS Marketplace Essentials SKUs for Space Management, Lease Management and Capital Planning, cloud SaaS Standard or Premium within MAS, and customer managed cloud, on premises or hybrid within MAS. For Planon, cloud is verified and on premise could not be verified either way. Planon productises integration into named connectors, Connect for AutoCAD, Connect for OpenBIM, Connect for Building Advisor and Connect for Analytics, which is a more purchasable shape than a services engagement. Planon does not claim a REST API, describing only web services or XML based integration.

Documentation is the sharpest practical difference. IBM publishes detailed documentation without a login, down to database specific preparation and tuning guidance for Db2, Oracle and SQL Server. Planon publishes no public documentation or release notes at all, requiring a customer portal login, so technical fit cannot be assessed before purchase.

Licensing posture

Neither vendor publishes a price figure. Planon is quote only, with every page routing to a demo request and no trial advertised. IBM is subscription based and offers a price estimator and a quote request rather than a published rate card. Neither offers a trial. Any figure you find for either product on a review aggregator is not vendor published and should not be used for budgeting.