Page 25: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (May 2020)

SofTwAre SoluTionS mostly pursued by larger and shipping italization have tended to dive into topics where the early adopters will start to reap companies, we see that increasingly also and technologies already years ahead the benefts of their investments. Are you smaller shipping companies are starting of the daily world of most ship own- one of them? if not, our advice to you is to explore maritime software solutions ers in the industry. Combine that with that it’s the time to get off the fence and to optimize their businesses. The some- a strengthened focus on more sustain- explore your options. Start small, focus what slow adoption in a broad scale can able, effcient and greener operations, we on proven solutions and you will be on @5BOLFS@8Y)@&/QEG probably credited to several factors, but feel confdent that 2020 will be the year the right track for the future.

in our opinion the three main reasons are the lack of quality data, high entry costs and lack of “real world” use-cases with healthy ROIs. That is about to change.

With large parts of the older ineffcient tonnage being scrapped during the last years, ship operators are now inevitably left with the task to optimize the opera- tions of their existing feets, and digital tools will play a key role in this. Also, the number of newbuilds equipped with additional sensors is slowly but steadily increasing – also across the less “sophis- ticated” shipping segments. This is indi- cating that ship owners have come to ac- knowledge the fact that they need to get ready for the digital age ahead of them.

In addition, we see that the solutions and services available to maritime players are getting more mature and it can be ex- $ pected that the focus will broaden in the .

short term from fuel & energy manage- : ment solutions - which have dominated $.

maritime digitalization for a long time .: – towards other less well-established ar- eas, such as document handling, repair & $: maintenance and port call optimizations.

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We also expect 2020 to be a year when , cyber security fnally gets its deserved focus with the new IMO guidelines com- ing into effect on 1st of January 2021.

Connecting vessels in order to get access to vessel data and sharing it with value added applications obviously also poses a risk, making it crucial to understand the exposure and take mitigating actions.

The ones that will be successful will fnd the right balance between protect- ing their systems and opening them up in order to explore the business potential of digitalization.

Furthermore, we also see that “real world” use cases are starting to emerge as solutions are getting more mature and the cost of getting access to quality data is going down. Finally, some will say, as conferences and articles on maritime dig- www.marinelink.com 25