Kyklades Maritime has 17 vessels installed with Fleet Xpress and Infinity Plus. In this article, Nikolaos Kourtalis, the company’s ICTManager, discusses the ways in which Kyklades Maritime is using a combination of Fleet Xpress and Navarino technology solutions to enhance the efficiency of its operations and to expand its options for business applications.
‘Our vessels are equipped with various autonomous technologies that connect over satellite with several land-based facilities to make our operations more efficient.
Since installing Fleet Xpress (FX) we have been able to take advantage of its higher bandwidths and fixed fee pricing to maximize our productivity and install new software, to, for example, monitor our vessels engines or for navigation, all of which is also accessible from shore through the FX connection.
Fleet Xpress has also benefitted our crews during the ongoing pandemic during which time providing a secure, reliable and functional connectivity option for our seafarers has been crucial. FX provided our crews with exactly that in addition to fast, stable bandwidth which we were able to offer them free of charge for much of their communication requirements.
We chose to install the Sailor 100 FX antenna for our fleet which we have found to be a very reliable solution, and which has not presented any hardware issues. Installation is also straightforward, with simpler cabling than other antenna solutions and with less points of failure.
To manage and optimize the connectivity that Fleet Xpress provides us with, we have installed Navarino’s Infinity solution. This provides us with a single platform from which we can monitor almost every aspect of our fleet. We can easily track vessels’ positions, quickly apply firewall rules across our fleet as well as synchronize application data and remotely troubleshoot crucial operating systems.
Infinity additionally provides us with VOIP communications between the fleet and our onshore offices and allows us to fully manage the crew network, as well as having a very useful logging system which helps us to quickly investigate and resolve any issues.
We have also installed Navarino’s Spectrum service on some of our vessels. As shipping is increasingly relying on digital solutions for the completion of everyday tasks, Spectrum supports our cyber risk management strategy in accordance with the relevant regulations and the best practices that we follow on board our vessels. Spectrum’s asset management, network virtualization, remote monitoring, software updating mechanism and patching tools are all crucial in order to comply with regulations.
To conclude, I can say that we are very pleased with both the direct and indirect interactions we enjoy with Navarino. Our overall experience with both their technical support and sales teams has been more than satisfactory and all the products and services provided by Navarino to Kyklades Maritime have very much met our expectations.’
Andreas Dimitriadis, Navarino’s Director of Strategic Partnerships, added ‘We at Navarino are very proud to work together with Mr Kourtalis and the Kyklades Maritime team. I am delighted to hear about how our innovative technology services are bringing them real benefits in their daily operations. We are dedicated to developing our portfolio of solutions to meet the needs of the maritime ICT sector and delivering those solutions packaged in a five-star customer experience.
I would like to thank Mr Kourtalis very much for taking the time to create this article with us and I look forward to working closely with him and Kyklades Maritime for many years to come.’