Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) is a new start-up passenger rail service in Marin and Sonoma County California, north of San Francisco. The initial operating segment is 43 miles with 10 stations. The full project will provide 70 miles of passenger rail service. SMART chose MAXIMO as its maintenance management information system and made the decision to go with a cloud based approach from the onset. This decision was made for a few reasons.

1. Accessibility: SMART has 4 main offices as well as many other locations spread out over its 43 mile right of way. Having a MAXIMO system in the cloud allows MAXIMO to be accessed from any internet connected device, regardless of where on the railroad the worker is

2. Reliability: Keeping MAXIMO in the cloud guarantees at least a 99.99% uptime. This is critical as SMART operates on a 24/7/365 schedule. Any downtime of MAXIMO at any time would negatively affect our operation. The reliability and redundancy of the cloud virtually eliminates the possibility of this happening.

3. Cost: A MAXIMO cloud installation allows our cost to scale with our organization. We are only paying for the users that we need.

4. No Maintenance: A cloud installation for MAXIMO eliminates the onsite hardware requirement of a server, UPS, and other associated IT equipment. SMART has two IT staff for the whole railroad. The decision to go in the cloud over an onsite installation reduces the burden on this staff.

Maximo in the cloud was the obvious choice for SMART based on reasons illustrated above. We have, over the past year and a half experienced zero unscheduled downtime, and required no technical work from our IT staff to manage the system in any way.

About the Presenter:

Bryan Crowley is a Railroad Information Systems Specialist with Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART). Bryan has 11 years of experience working in rail transportation with a focus on Information Technology. Bryan has been managing SMART’s MAXIMO system since it was implemented in late 2016.