Wärtsilä has announced that it has entered into a strategic partnership with Microsoft to integrate with Microsoft’s Azure IoT Edge infrastructure, to accelerate its efforts towards industrialising internet of things technologies for the shipping sector and to help its partners to more easily deploy applications to the market.

“The maritime world is entering the digital era where mutualising our investments into common platforms and standards are a prerequisite to successful innovations for a more sustainable and efficient maritime industry,” said Sean Fernback, President, Wärtsilä Voyage and Executive Vice President, Wärtsilä.

“The Wärtsilä common platform will act as an enabler to deploy future technology for autonomy and emissions reduction. We want to focus our efforts on those fields with commonly shared standards that give vessels easier access to innovative solutions.”

Wärtsilä says it aims to use its IoT infrastructure to support remote asset commissioning, diagnostics, updates, and upgrades, with the aim of streamlining maintenance, speeding up deployment, and increasing vessel uptime.

This strategy will also include efforts to support the building of an open development environment with standardised data formats and APIs that reduce fragmentation and integrate systems to reduce the complexity of the digital services lifecycle.

The company will additionally integrate several other Microsoft Security and IoT systems into its offerings to strengthen its monitoring, security updates and asset management services.

“Wärtsilä Voyage is innovating with solutions that reduce carbon emissions and enhance autonomous shipping. Its vision of the secure and connected vessel will be anchored by Microsoft IoT Edge and Security solutions. We look forward to help drive this significant step in the industry’s transformation,” said Ralph Haupter, President of Microsoft EMEA.