MOS is being formally launched at the Mainstream 2010 Conference, for maintenance and asset management professionals, that opens in Sydney today.
MOS is aimed at simplifying the way an organisation can deploy and use the company’s Mainpac AM software package. The software is hosted on a computer remotely located in a secure data centre, relieving the customer of the costs and management of on-site IT infrastructure.
MOS comprises two types of service. Under the first of these the customer pays a fee as low as $199 a month which includes a licence to use the Mainpac AM software, as well as the provision of the IT infrastructure and associated services.
Mainpac executive chairman, James Kirk, said “MOS is a strategic and pivotal announcement for the company. The product reflects Mainpac’s decision to offer a wider choice and greater flexibility in how our software is deployed at customer sites.
“Our research indicates that subscription-based payments will increasingly be the choice of smaller organisations who will nevertheless want the solid core functionality they have come to expect from Mainpac as a long-established developer of software for asset management and maintenance applications.”
Mainpac chief executive officer Andy Mason said this is ideally suited to providing asset and maintenance management functions for a one site operation which may be a single geographic location or a discrete functional area of a business.
With this service, software upgrades are included in the fee and are automatically deployed via the hosting service as they become available. Support is also included in the monthly fee.
Under the second type of service, a company pays a monthly fee of $99 to have the software hosted but continues to licence the software in a conventional manner. Users may choose to upgrade the software for an additional fee.
“Providing Mainpac software through a hosted service will dramatically simplify how companies can access the full functionality of Mainpac AM, our application for small to medium businesses, without the overheads of anything more than a PC and access to the Internet.
“In addition to lower costs and the faster implementation of the MOS approach, companies can focus on organisational core competencies by using external services for the management of the application and associated infrastructure.
“MOS will enable companies to better deploy their IT resources and to convert the management and maintenance of their assets from capital expenditure to operating expenditure.”
Mr. Mason said the process for an organisation wanting to make this transition could be as simple as taking a back-up of a customer’s current Mainpac instance and deploying it on the MOS infrastructure. Mainpac will then supply a unique URL through which the customer’s end-user can log-in to the software. Equally, organisations using older versions of asset management software and CMMS from other vendors can expect an easy transition to MOS using Mainpac’s conversion methodologies.
Mr. Mason said that MOS leverages Microsoft .NET which “we have found to be a strong technology platform to support the solution.”
The first customer to have signed up for MOS is the Australian arm of a global fast moving consumer goods manufacturing company.
Leighton Holdings business Infoplex is partnering with Mainpac to offer MOS. Infoplex provides users with the infrastructure necessary to access the Mainpac software through any of its data centres.
Mainpac has worked closely with Infoplex to deploy MOS on managed infrastructure to provide full monitoring, support, backups and data retention.
“We chose to partner with Infoplex because of its proven infrastructure, number of data centres, in Australia and overseas and its redundant facilities,” Mr. Mason said.
Customer support is provided through the Mainpac help desk which liaises with Infoplex as required.
About Mainpac
Mainpac is an Australian-owned software development company now in its 26th year. Its software for asset and maintenance management has over 4000 users across Australia and international markets serving manufacturing, mining and public sector users. The company’s suite of .NET products meet the needs of all sizes of organisation and are supported by ancillary products that use data captured through maintenance activities to support other enterprise information systems for ERP, MRP, financial or project management functions. For more information visit www.mainpac.com.au.
