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Out of the public's eye, ship vessels are sailing some pretty high-tech seas.
Today's vessels rely on communications technologies for a range of business activities including customs clearance and telephone services. Onboard crew also stay connected with customers, suppliers and family via e-mail and extranets.
But a new generation of applications could soon be coming off the waters with the introduction of Inmarsat's FleetBroadband in November, an IP-based service touting cost-effective voice and data communications to vessels.
In a recent e-mail interview with ZDNet Asia, Patrick Slesinger, CIO of Wallem Group, one of the world's leading shipmanagers headquartered in Hong Kong, discusses the impact of FleetBroadband and other technologies like Web services, set to reshape the industry.
An avid sailor, who began sailing competitively in 2005, Slesinger says the sport calls for good forward-planning and flexibility--the same attributes required in his full-time job.
As chief information officer, he oversees all telecommunications and IT functions for the Wallem Group, ensuring business units and their clients are well supported.
Slesinger says he spends a large part of his day devising ways to better support the business, and it is the continuing challenge of creating business value that keeps him awake at night.
It is also no surprise that his other dream occupation has to do with the sea.
Q. What are your responsibilities as CIO for Wallem Group?
Slesinger: I sit on the Wallem Group's executive committee and am responsible for internal group IT and also third-party contracts. These include software development and support, BPO (business process outsourcing) and BPR (business process re-engineering) for the group's clients, and other third-parties in the maritime industry.
My primary responsibility is to create, and operate, an environment for cost-effective business process support. IT is an enabler and not an end in itself; it is there to support the business units and their clients. Further to this, IT can enable new business opportunities, and a large part of my day is taken up looking for ways to support the business units' near-, medium- and long-term strategies. This entails ensuring the group's IT strategy stays in step and advising the business units of potential enabling technologies, best practices and methodologies inside and outside of the maritime industry.
The management of the BPR and BPO projects in the group is also my responsibility. The visibility to the divisional core business processes, gained through the reduction of business processes to the Use Cases documentation standard, has already enabled considerable improvements in efficiency and operational controls.
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How has IT changed the way the maritime industry operates or conducts business?
The maritime industry is a global business, and one which most of the time is outside of the public's eye. The coal face for the industry is the vessel, which spends the majority of its time at sea. The key IT enabler for the industry has been without a doubt the introduction of data services over Inmarsat. With the introduction of ship-based e-mail in the early to mid-1990s, ship-shore process integration became possible. Over the years, the Inmarsat product offerings have improved this integration, and now with the introduction of FleetBroadband, it is possible to treat a PC or system onboard a vessel as if it was part of your terrestrial wide area network.
Due to the global nature of the industry, the widespread adoption of the Internet has enabled the use of extranets and VPNs (virtual private networks) to reach all counter parties, from customers to suppliers. Remote offices have benefited from being able to cost-effectively access core group systems and with the adoption of XML based standards in the industry, inter-organization operational efficiencies have also been possible.
What are the top three technologies that are being adopted and making an impact in the maritime industry, and why?
Wider and more innovative use of Inmarsat-enabled systems is going to be a primary driver for the industry. Bringing the vessel 'closer to shore' will, without a doubt, enable currently impossible process deployments to become possible. Whilst in the past the focus has been to remove processes from the vessel, as the crew is overworked due to reduced manning levels, it may be possible to cost-effectively move processes and process support staff back to the vessels.
Extranet-enabled systems are playing a wider role in the industry with most organizations exposing some core systems this way. Increased process transparency, forced in part by regulations and competitive pressure, will increase the need for such systems. To date, the industry has been slow to adopt Web services, however, I can see this changing as companies wish to carry out process integration but do not want to have to visit half a dozen extranet sites to get the job done.
Standardization of data interchange via XML-based (Extensible Markup Language) standards is picking up pace and will be required if we are, as an industry, to move toward Web services and/or, at a simpler level, away from constantly re-entering data.
What are the challenges in building wireless networks on board ships?
Vessels are not wireless-network friendly places. Steel bulkheads and deck plates make wireless propagation difficult, at best, only possilbe outside of the accommodation block. Of greater value, as mentioned above, is building wireless networks to the vessels to allow ship-shore process integration.
Other than Inmarsat, there have in recent years been a number of other offerings based around VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) that have come and gone. The most visible of these offerings to disappear was Connexions by Boeing.
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