Athens-based Primebulk Shipmanagement Ltd operates a fleet of 9 vessels. The company recently decided to begin implementing Navarino’s innovative new Quazar platform across its fleet.

Quazar is an easy to deploy and cost-effective way to acquire, install and manage a vessel’s IT infrastructure. It includes all onboard hardware and software combined with a 24/7 personal Navarino IT Manager, backed up by a dedicated team of IT specialists, all for one fixed monthly fee per vesselUsing an ‘IT-as-a-service’ concept, Quazar removes the CAPEX for hardware or software acquisition, replacing it with hardware leasing, software licensing, and support fees that are all included in the monthly fee. Quazar also allows for the implementation of advanced security policies that safeguard all digital infrastructure and devices; making systems more robust against cyber-attacks while complying with regulations. In addition, a personal Navarino IT manager assigned per fleet offers an expert, personalized understanding of a vessel’s IT infrastructure, and implements any service or support request that the ship operator requires.

Dimitris Zografos, IT manager at Primebulk, said ‘The number one reason we chose Quazar is the cyber security of our vessels which we take very seriously. Before, we had of course things like group policies on the servers and antivirus but not a complete solution. Quazar has really helped us to ensure a complete, secure setup across the fleet. Navarino’s Quazar team has also begun preparing for us the documentation needed for the IMO cyber requirements – this is a demanding task that would have been extremely difficult to prepare ourselves. It is a huge help for us to have the Quazar team do this for us, creating tailor-made documentation, so that we just need to read through, amend it slightly if needed and approve it, rather than doing the whole task ourselves from scratch.

The second reason we are installing Quazar is time – it saves us a lot of it. By handing over most of the day to day support, equipment preparation and management of our vessels’ IT infrastructure to our personal Navarino IT manager we free up a tremendous amount of our resources internally to focus on other things. I no longer need to attend to minor support issues on our vessels, for example if the Wi-Fi is not working, or a printer is not working – with Quazar, such support is taken care of by Navarino, not by me.

What’s more, before Quazar we had a single server setup, meaning that we had a single point of failure. Now with Quazar, we have a fully redundant setup with full remote desktop access.

Navarino has always provided us with excellent support and our personal Navarino IT manager has only added to that. In fact, although we did check other alternatives to Quazar and Navarino, the number one reason we chose Navarino is the people it employs and also its flexibility in its services. For example, I really like their infinity portal because it allows me to do whatever I want. Other such solutions on the market that I have tested do not allow me to change their setup exactly as I want it, nor do they provide the range of features that Infinity offers.

At the end of the day, all actions on board taken by the Quazar team need to be approved by me – for example the other day a vessel requested the installation of some new Wi-Fi access points, which I approved and then it was smoothly implemented by Navarino. So Quazar not only saves me time, but it also is fully overseen and controlled by us, giving us the peace of mind that comes from knowing all our vessels IT networks are fully supported and maintained and in exactly the way we want them to be.’

Konstantinos Dimitriadis, Navarino Account Manager for Primebulk said ‘I am very excited about this project that gives Primebulk a major evolution in the way it operates its IT infrastructure across its fleet. We always like to focus on helping our customers to enhance their operations with our forward-thinking solutions which we tailor to their exact needs wherever we can. I enjoy a strong partnership with Dimitris, and I look forward to continue helping him to rollout Quazar on his vessels.