Laskaridis Maritime and Marpoint have entered into an agreement for the complete IT support of the Newbuilding vessels in terms of Network Management, IT Infrastructure monitoring and proactive IT Managed Services.
A Newbuilding project represents a significant Capital Investment for any shipping company and a number of choices made at the new-building stage will affect both operational efficiency and ships lifetime quality.
For our Newbuilding projects, we set the highest standards at the forefront of technology and safety. From discussing the projects step by step in detail at the drawing board, up to delivery and support, a high level of cooperation and commitment was met that is hard to find nowadays.
Marpoint’s IT Managed Services improves our cyber safety compliance and operational efficiency. Their solution is all-in-one and class-approved. Our computer’s operation and network assets performance is more efficient and future costs prediction can be identified proactively and dealt with by properly applying patch management and remote health monitoring, giving us 24/7 control.
Above all, we are happy to see they met our very tight time windows and requirements in such difficult times.
Vasileios Tsialtas – ICT Manager
CHALLENGE
The New Building Challenge
A Newbuilding vessel must meet all the latest criteria in terms of safety, environmental compliance, and technological infrastructure.
Finding the optimal solution to support their IT objectives, was a challenging task for Laskaridis Maritime, as the following should be ensured:
· The latest technology applied in the selected network hardware/software and in accordance to the shipyard’s specifications.
· Customization of offering (not a black box solution), in accordance to the Shipowner’s and Shipyard’s requirements.
· An all-in-one solution in terms of safety, design, risk assessment, and vulnerabilities management that will provide uniformity across the new building fleet.
· With IMO 2021 regulation in effect, the solution should meet specific cyber safety standards, preferably approved by a world-leading Classification Society.
SOLUTION
A Project Management team was assembled at Marpoint in order interact with the IT Management of Laskaridis towards smooth coordination of the newbuilding projects.
· Objectives were set.
· Prerequisites were defined.
· Allocation of people was made.
· Scheduling of related tasks in accordance to each vessel’s time frame prior leaving the shipyard.
· Testing intervals of the solution were defined before the vessels touch water.
The following value-added services were agreed:
· Marpoint IT Project Manager for the Laskaridis Newbuilding vessels was appointed.
· Dedicated Marpoint IT Team for 24/7/365 IT Managed Services, via an automated ticketing system and with standardized response times according to the event.
The latest Technological advancements and professional IT services are now provided to the Laskaridis Newbuilding vessel.
These include:
SOLUTION
Evo2, our Class Approved and cyber secured communication management platform that will provide Laskaridis Maritime with the below distinctive features:
· Establishment of a Secure Vessel Network, via our Evo2 Router Enterprise-grade firewall, web dns filtering, application filtering and secure VPN interconnection.
· Custom rules on vessels’ firewall, alerting and web filtering service.
· Assets/Networks Segmentation.
· VoIP Services: Laskaridis’ Seafarers will enjoy unparallel crew calling services.
Marpoint’s Evo2 Router ensures redundancy with True Failover having double hardware & power supplies in the same machine, keeping them always online.
SOLUTION
UNI Virtualization Manager, our Triple Node Cluster and IT Managed Services will ensure 24/7/365 remote management of the Newbuildings’ complete IT hardware and software infrastructure and provide unique features such as:
· Triple Backup of Laskaridis’ fleet business files and critical applications, providing business continuity with no single point of failure, as per IMO 2021 regulation.
· Risk assessment.
· Desktop Virtualization and Active Directory using cyber secure and low-cost Linux Thin clients.
· Real time Inventory Assets management (Ups, printers, thin clients and other).
· Software Patching, in accordance with IMO 2021.
SOLUTION
5G Technology: our latest innovation for near-shore connectivity and a reliable backup to Satellite Communications.
5G communications technology will unlock new connectivity applications and transform vessel operations for Laskaridis Newbuildings; at the same time, it will provide added value to Charterers.
