Leading tech innovators join forces

(Posted on 15/04/21)

Inmarsat, the world-leading mobile satellite communications provider, and OneOcean, the global leader in compliance and navigation services for the maritime industry, are delighted to announce a partnership that focuses on the next phase of the digitalisation of navigation and compliance in the maritime industry.

The multi-phase agreement which will see OneOcean become an Inmarsat Certified Application Provider (CAP) is centred on leveraging Inmarsat’s technology platform and OneOcean’s digital solutions to transform the way voyage planning software is deployed, updated and integrated between ship and shore.

Remote deployment of OneOcean technology is the first of many benefits of the partnership, enabling reduced set-up time, minimum disruption and, most importantly, reduced cyber risk. Physical deployment of all software has unavoidably been affected due to lockdown restrictions and growing onboard cyber security concerns. This agreement will address these issues, by enabling global deployment of software through on-demand, cyber secure, digital operations.

The software will be deployed over Inmarsat’s high-speed Fleet Connect dedicated bandwidth service, which is completely separate from crew and business traffic and helps free-up constrained bandwidth for other essential tasks onboard and ensure safety critical navigational tools remain up to date.

Finally, it will allow OneOcean customers to extract the maximum value from their voyage planning and compliance software, which has been designed to simplify and standardise working practices between ship and shore. Data capture and sharing with teams ashore will be greatly optimised and allow for improved decision making and real time interventions across an individual voyage or fleet operations.

This is all made possible by Fleet Connect, which provides an uninterrupted satellite link between tens of thousands of vessels and seafarers across the world’s oceans. By combining this pioneering technology with OneOcean’s vision for progressive, maritime solutions, the partnership heralds a new era of maritime digitalisation.

“We are delighted to welcome OneOcean to our CAP ecosystem joining over 40 other application providers. By using Fleet Connect, vessels can update mission-critical software easily and cost-effectively without installing new hardware, at a time when Covid-19 continues to make ship visits especially challenging,” said Ronald Spithout, President, Inmarsat Maritime. “This is the first part of an agreement through which two leading companies have identified collaboration as the most competitive and practical route towards fully digitalised voyage planning and navigation.”

Martin Taylor, CEO of OneOcean, also commented on the exclusive agreement, “We are very proud to be working with Inmarsat on our mission to fully digitalise the maritime industry. We are constantly developing new software and looking at ways to improve the ship to shore integrated experience. This partnership supports our mission to break down barriers and create the connected ship. As a first step, I am looking forward to leveraging the benefits that Fleet Connect brings to our customers and software.”