Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 25 | Page 32

CASE STUDY “The maritime industry is undergoing its own digital transformation.” consumption, speed or maintenance issues, for example. shore and is able to transform them into branch offices at sea.” Maritime Connect also delivers innovative maritime bandwidth management and optimisation features. It manages voice, video and data in limited bandwidth and challenging weather conditions and prevents cyberattacks thanks to an integrated suite of security features. René Kofod-Olsen, Chief Executive Officer, Topaz, said: “The maritime industry is undergoing its own digital transformation, from digital ports to vessel management. We operate in a unique context spanning ship to shore operations, with the majority of our people based offshore. By enhancing the communications capabilities of our vessels, we are able to synchronise and manage our integrated business operations more effectively and ensure our crew can easily access the Internet for all their business communication needs, as well as connecting them to family and friends and transforming the onboard experience.” Orange is uniquely able to support maritime digital transformation by combining many different technologies and networks – both onshore and offshore – with end-to- end integration and in-house satellite connectivity. Shipping companies, IT managers, captains and the crew can control access to data and voice services on board vessels or remotely from the shore. Luc Serviant, vice president, Middle East and Africa at Orange Business Services, said: “Today Orange is working across all sectors to help enterprises to respond to the demands of digital transformation. Historically in the maritime sector, limited connectivity and the need for multiple communications providers has meant the exclusion of fleets from the centralised business processes, ultimately resulting in reduced productivity. With Maritime Connect, Topaz can integrate its ships with the 32 INTELLIGENTCIO Intelligent CIO spoke to Kris Vedat, Head of IT for Topaz, to find out more about the solution. How does the platform increase the efficiency of the fleet? Digitisation is an important investment for any modern fleet, benefiting customer, company and crew. It removes the need for many manual processes making the crew more efficient and allowing better visibility for the shore staff for planned maintenance activities, fuel consumption, average speeds etc. Digitisation gives us the “Topaz takes cyber security seriously, treating a vessel as an office and ensuring the same protection is applied.” ability to collect and then process data in real time and having access to this information enables us to be more proactive in our approach to planned and preventative maintenance and allows us to identify potential problems, such as an equipment malfunction, in real time too. How does it lower costs? Fuel consumption and vessel downtime will be positively impacted. For example, we will be able to optimise vessel routing and speed as well as identifying abnormal fuel consumption in real time. How does it improve the onboard experience of the crew? The welfare of our crew is imperative and this platform will allow them to more easily stay in touch with friends and family via instant messages and video call technology such as Skype, and with the outside world in general through better internet availability and the ability to update media archives onboard, replicating an airline-style media system. How well does the concept of the ships being ‘offices at sea’ work in practice? All our vessels are treated as a branch office with the same access to www.intelligentcio.com