Digital technologies revolutionize marine industry

Stefan Boudestein

The advancement of digital technologies such as IoT, blockchain and cloud computing has tremendous potential for revolutionizing the shipping industry. The transition has already started with major stakeholders running pilot projects in a variety of its domains. Varuna Marine Services strongly believes that the uptake of new technologies will hold the key to driving growth and efficiency in global shipping.

We are working on an innovative platform called CyberSmart, which helps its users to avail full digital solutions in the audit process, from planning till reporting. Additionally it provides insights through data analytics that will be key to maritime policy formulation in the years to come.

Shenzhen is leading by example when it comes to facilitating regional and global trade. As global trade rises, Shenzhen will have to keep pace with the changing trade landscape to remain competitive and serve the needs of the digital trade ecosystem. Providing national and international companies fertile ground to compete for the betterment of existing processes will go a long way toward driving growth and efficiency. This requires a broad and long-term vision, which seems to be at the core of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

(Stefan Boudestein, Varuna Marine Services business development manager, the Netherlands)

Sanjeev Namath

The maritime sector is very conservative and slow to change. We need every eco-system stakeholder to realize that digitalization is the way forward.

The uptrend in ship-to-shore connectivity along with mature cloud computing and AI technologies will encourage the adoption of SMARTShip solutions.

An analogy can be drawn in our own personal life where the mobile bandwidth connectivity (from 2G, 3G to 4G and soon 5G) and smart technologies have enabled the adoption of smartphones. This has completely transformed our lifestyle in the past 10 years and smartphones have become essential in our day-to-day life. The maritime sector is at a similar point as 10 years ago when people were still figuring out the value of buying a smartphone.

Digitalization, followed by cloud computing and the use of AI applications, will transform the way we operate ships and also change the way we do business.

When you compare the maritime sector with the terrestrial sector — at least in mainstream ship operations — there is a huge gap in technology adoption. The marine economy has been very conservative and price sensitive.

One of the critical issues to address here is the current business model, which does not encourage transparency. Furthermore, the lack of transparency in a ship’s operations has resulted in a lot of unintended losses for stakeholders across the value chain.

Our SMARTShip solution provides a good practical solution by bringing this transparency.

(Sanjeev Namath, Chief business officer of Alpha Ori Technologies Pte. Ltd., Singapore)