During the past four decades great progress within information handling and storage has been accomplished. The importance of enterprise information technology (IT) systems has increased in order to meet the demands set by the users. This is the case also for maintenance management IT, i.e. applications used for maintenance management purposes, such as computerised maintenance management systems or maintenance/asset management modules in enterprise resource planning systems. This paper discusses how the needs of maintenance management IT can be identified. It also studies the functionality of commercial maintenance management IT systems. Main result is a holistic model of maintenance management IT functionality and characteristics needs.