Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to presents the current and prospective state of affairs when it comes to the information and communication technologies (ICTs) in condition monitoring (CM) and maintenance, especially for the e-maintenance approach.

Design/methodology/approach – The author presents some of the standards for the domain of interest, such as the open system architecture condition-based maintenance. In addition, the e-maintenance approach is gone through as well as such ICTs as, for instance, the emergent web technologies, the service-oriented architecture (SOA), the web services and the Web 2.0 are analysed.

Findings – The findings highlight the need for a clearer understanding of the characteristics of different ICTs, such as Web 2.0 technologies, Cloud computing, agent technologies, etc., to be able to use them in an optimal manner for various purposes in the e-maintenance applications. In addition, the standardisation of the emergent ICTs different aspects is shown to be an important factor for the development of different phases of software as well as for its overall acceptance.

Research limitations/implications – The given work presents the current and emergent ICTs for the domain of interest and provides the discussion and various issues connected to these ICTs.

Practical implications – The author provides practical implications of the different ICTs mentioned in the paper, i.e. benefits and possibilities as well as risks when those technologies are implemented for CM and maintenance, especially for the e-maintenance.

Originality/value – The paper provides insight into various current and prospective ICTs for the domain of interest that provides important knowledge for different employees with the objective of a purchase, users of the system, such as technicians, maintenance engineers as well as developers of these systems. Consequently, the paper provides knowledge of different characteristics of the current and prospective technologies, which is important to take into account in order to be able not only to use them in an optimal manner, but also to understand possible constraints if they are used in the system and in applications in the domain.