A friend's startup competes with Maximo, and IBM's "in-place version upgrade" has not yet been completed for a client with less than a year-long consultant enga

A friend's startup competes with Maximo, and IBM's "in-place version upgrade" has not yet been completed for a client with less than a year-long consultant engagement to fix changes that are both forwards AND backwards incompatible. Might as well be a new system.