Dualog, a maritime digital platform provider, has announced that The China Navigation Company (CNCo) has begun the testing phase of the Dualog Drive application, a service designed to simplify the collection and distribution of large volumes of data between ship and shore.
In a statement, Dualog said its application “ensures optimised transfers between sea and shore at the time and place they are needed”, by using “maritime-optimised technology”.
The company went to say Dualog Drive provides the “ideal solution” to what it called the “core challenge” of integrating ships with the shore-based elements of an organisation.
“As every part of business becomes digitalised,” it said, “land-based enterprises have turned to cloud solutions to enable secure, company-wide data collection and distribution.”
The application, Dualog claims, allows larger files to be transferred from the above mentioned land-based offices to vessels out at sea. Currently, most shipping companies use email-based systems for data sharing, but this is limiting.
The Dualog Drive is said to solve this, as well as the reliance on “expensive and unreliable” satellite connections, which require users to micromanage data transfers.
Gerry Bonner, General Manager Fleet Services, at CNCo, said: “Dualog Drive has proved to be an efficient means to share information from shore to ship and vice versa for CNCo.
“Safety documentation was our starting point, and we now use Dualog Drive to distribute and maintain a repository of SMS documents pertaining to all ships in our fleet. As we investigated the options, other potential uses became apparent.
“We have used the system for IT software distribution, collection of Voyage Data Recorder (VDR) data for urgent investigations, and to share updates of vessel drawings after revisions. We also want to use Drive to ensure that major Equipment Safety Updates and Technical Circulars, as well as Certificates, are updated across our fleet accordingly.
“We have also used the system to distribute company circulars and safety notices, and we are considering several other situations where we can provide additional benefit to our Ships Staff by using the Dualog Drive Application.”
CNCo plans to have Dualog® Drive fully operational across CNCo’s entire fleet before the summer.
Andrea Giglietti, Customer Service Manager in Dualog’s Singapore office, said: “Dualog Drive makes possible digitalisation of many processes that were simply impracticable in the past.
“And with the possibility to install and roll out to large numbers of vessels in a very short timescale, implementation causes minimal disruption.”
