In a recent report, the leading business consultancy McKinsey highlighted the leading technology trends that are likely to influence society and businesses in the years to come. Among the top technologies identified, McKinsey places Edge technologies as a critical enabler for the Internet of Things revolution. Coming from the maritime industry, this makes a lot of sense. Despite its prevalence in our everyday lives, access to a high speed and low latency internet connection cannot always be taken for granted. In a lot of operational scenarios your data infrastructure needs to be built to operate in an “occasionally connected” environment. This places particular demands on the technology stack and software deployed to these use cases.
The maritime industry is one of the industries where this will be an instrumental criteria for any digitalization effort. Vessels sail around the globe and will experience highly variable conditions for connectivity. So-called “satellite shadows” often lead to missing connectivity altogether, while bandwidth and speed can vary on a daily, or even hourly, basis. Even if we will see an increase in connectivity solutions, with both incumbent players as well as new entrants stepping up the effort to provide high speed internet access to every corner of the world, Edge will still remain an important element of the infrastructure. Not the least because, as McKinsey states, the increasing data intensity in all industrial processes will require a lot more computation to happen on the Edge, in real time, rather than in retrospect in the cloud.
Why is getting your Edge technology right so tricky? There are three main issues that need to be tackled by the digital infrastructure onboard a connected vessel.
State of the art security: There is an increasing need to ensure all digital deployments on a vessel meet security requirements. This means that you will want to have an infrastructure onboard that is always updated to the latest, state of the art security levels, without you having to worry about this. This requires an infrastructure that is continuously developed and updated over-the-air with the latest releases, with every unit being equally safe at all times without having to wait for manual updates to be deployed on a vessel by vessel basis.
Self reliance: An onboard system needs to be able to operate completely independently, even in offline mode, while at the same time being able to be updated on a regular basis to add enhanced features as well as to ensure all necessary cyber security updates are installed. Whenever a connection is available, the system therefore needs to be able to grab updates, download them and install without failing. This needs to be automated to ensure you do not fall victim to failing manual processes or human error.
Trustworthy data: In most, if not all, vessel digitalization initiatives, data plays a significant role. As an owner or operator vessels, you need to be able to trust that the data you get is complete and that you can trust it. Some of the data you will likely get on a real-time basis, while some is uploaded in batches whenever suitable. Even if a vessel goes offline, you need to be able to trust that you will get a complete data set with trustworthy data as soon as the vessel comes online again. This place demands on the ability of the infrastructure to ensure that data is uploaded as desired as well as stored underway, irrespective of wether the vessel has connectivity or not.
These three elements are critical for a digital infrastructure operating at the Edge. In addition, there is a fundamental value in being able to undertake computing tasks as close to the data source as possible. These tasks can for instance be compression or data quality related tasks. Compressing at the Edge enables you to reduce data transmission needs as well, while data quality tasks allow you to also consume the data at the Edge, for instance as a dashboard for crews, with the same data quality as the onshore personnel will experience. This further emphasizes the need for Edge technologies to support your digitalization efforts.
Get in touch if you want to learn more about how RaaEdge can help you achieving the maximum potential from your fleet.
Eirik Berteig
Head of Strategy
Eirik writes about topics related to the strategic aspects of maritime data.
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