Page 24: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (May 2, 2010)

ROUNDTABLE SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS

Software Solutions 24 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News

Albert Carbone, CEO, ShipDecision “By improving efficiency, ShipDecision helps organi- zations do “more with less”; and that is a very pow- erful message in economic times like these.”

Martime Industry

Faces Hard

Challenges on

Efficiency, Emissions & Security with

Specifically, what niche of the global maritime industry do you most directly supply?

Hughey, ABS NS We have a dynamic, flexible offering that fits perfectly into the main four maritime sectors: marine, workboat, offshore & energy and gov- ernment. The NS5 suite is available to all commercial, corporate and private vessels and offshore assets and can be integrated with third-party applications and program interfaces.

Fah, MESPAS MESPAS supplies the technical oper- ations side of ship managers with a variety of different software solutions on the basis of software as a service (SaaS). The software offering is complemented by an array of managed services tailored to both ship owners and ship management companies.

Carbone, Stelvio ShipDecision is aimed at all the players in the maritime industry that have a need to exchange information. We currently have modules for

Operators, Charterers, Brokers, Surveyors, Agents, P&I

Clubs, and Registries – with more modules in the de- velopment pipeline.

Coppin, AVEVA AVEVA supplies software and services to two major groups in the maritime in- dustry - 3D design systems to shipyards and design of- fices, and information management systems to any party in the maritime industry that requires significant ex- change of digital engineering data between globally dis- tributed collaboration partners. Again, this can include shipyards and design offices, but also ship management companies, classification societies and equipment sup- pliers.

Galatas, MarineCFO Our product specifically serves the workboat market from small tugs and push boats to large OSV’s and all variations of work boats in between.

How is your product/service differentiated from the competition?

Galatas, MarineCFO MarineCFO is a true boat to balance sheet solution, meaning that we can handle every transaction that a work boat company might have from recording vessel logs to handling commercial and compliance related data as well as full accounting and fi- nancial reporting. While our product can be used in a modular fashion, we also allow companies to cover all of their operating and financial software needs with one application rather than piecing together a variety of dif- ferent software.

Carbone, Stelvio When we launched our pro- totype three years ago, we were the first to bring a fully functioning, web-based solution to the maritime indus- try. We believe that ShipDecision is unique in that it has been designed from a clean sheet of paper to address what we perceive as a huge challenge in the maritime industry: integration of information from the various players. Our niche is in building business systems that provide both for the integration of data across individual companies and between business partners of those com- panies, thereby improving efficiency across the board.

Our systems are built for the sake of business, not for the sake of technology. We know full well that in the world of business, people use computers because they have to, not because they want to. ShipDecision is de- signed for ease of use; it lets users concentrate on doing their job – not struggling with a computer.

Hughey, ABS NS Our product offering is very unique; R&D is client-driven and based around the in- tegrity of a vessel structure, which also ties into the class product line integration. No other company provides this right now. We also provide staff that are subject experts on our product, and maintain a competitive advantage through our backing from ABS, which allows for streamlining the inspection process and moving toward developing a more standardized, class-approved main- tenance program.

Maritime Reporter & Engineering News recently was afforded the opportunity to pick the brains of some of the leading executives in the business of supplying advanced soft- ware solutions to make maritime operations more efficient, reliable and cost effective. Those that shared their views were: Karen Hughey, President & COO, ABS Nautical

Systems • Dave Coppin, Head of AVEVA NET Business, AVEVA • Joe Galatas, President, MarineCFO • Peter Fah, Managing Director, MESPAS • Albert Carbone, CEO,

ShipDecision • Matthew Hodkinson,Business Development Director, SpecTec Group • John Veson, President, Veson Nautical.

John Veson, President, Veson Nautical

You are starting to see you younger generation coming up and taking over some of the companies, which will be a big impetus to push software solu- tions in the industry. Today we don’t have to spend as much time selling the concept of the system; now it just selling the system.