Israel-based XT Management has agreed a new deal with Navarino which will see the vessel operator’s entire fleet upgraded from FleetBroadband to Fleet Xpress VSAT systems, the companies have announced.
“Previously, our fleet was equipped with Inmarsat FleetBroadband. We started looking for new solutions due to a variety of reasons. Firstly, our crew’s welfare is one of our top priorities and so we wanted to be able to offer them a more capable solution with higher speeds than FleetBroadband,” explained Avi Lavi, XT’s CIO.
“We also wanted to implement a new ERP system, which necessitated quite a high amount of data transfer and data creation. Finally, we wanted to have the option to remotely install new software on board and to remotely provide effective support.”
“To achieve this, we had developed a clear picture of what we would need – in short, we wanted to replicate nothing less than a shore office IT environment on board our fleet.”
The new system to be supplied by Navarino will provide higher bandwidth to XT’s vessels using Fleet Xpress and deliver a new technology management infrastructure via the Infinity Cube hardware which will be installed alongside the satcom equipment, to provide centralised control of the IT and communications networks.
The Infinity Cube will also give XT the ability to add greater redundancy into its IT systems, to prevent single points of failure and minimise the potential for IT issues to cause downtime, while additionally supporting the deployment of new applications on the company’s vessels.
“We are now able to do so much more for our vessels from our office, whether it’s creating a new server, adjusting firewall settings or a variety of other extremely useful actions remotely. In the near future, we intend to roll out the same installation across the fleet,” Mr Lavi adds.
