The line between CMMS and EAM is one of the most commonly confused pairs of acronyms in maintenance software, mostly because vendors use them inconsistently in marketing copy.
The practical distinction
CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) is built around the maintenance workflow: work orders, preventive maintenance schedules, technician assignment, spare parts tied to a specific job, and the audit trail of what was done to a piece of equipment and when.
EAM (Enterprise Asset Management) is built around the asset as a financial and lifecycle object: what it cost to acquire, what it's cost to maintain over its life, what condition it's in, and when it makes more sense to replace it than keep repairing it — usually rolled up across multiple sites for capital planning.
In practice, most software sits somewhere on a spectrum between the two rather than cleanly in one camp. A capable CMMS tracks enough asset history to support lifecycle decisions; a full EAM platform still needs a working maintenance-workflow layer underneath it, or the lifecycle data it reports on is never accurate to begin with.
Why this matters when evaluating software
If the honest answer to "what problem are we solving" is "our maintenance team can't keep up with work orders and PMs are slipping," that's a CMMS problem, and paying for EAM-level capital-planning features on top of it is buying capability that won't get used yet. EAM earns its complexity once an organization is making cross-site investment decisions — replace this press fleet or keep repairing it — not before.