Compuships

Our services

CONSULTING

Supervision of vessel network connection on satellite systems

The embarked IT devices must match a very strict set of specifications as well as facing very specific operating constraints.

It’s these same IT devices that manage ship’s communications and therefore must be able to communicate without problems with satellite transmission systems, designed, installed and maintained by different technical services.

It’s also this administrative network that manages the CMMS* and / or certification, or stability software; and it is again this network that stores and transmits the commercial and / or call documents, allowing these calls to to be conducted in the best conditions and in the shortest time.

Nowadays, a computer problem has a direct impact on all these aspects, and may have, directly or indirectly, very important financial consequences. Moreover, recent studies show that the quality of service of the embarked administrative computer network has significant repercussions on crew stress.

In order well understand all aspects of these problems, it's absolutely necessary to have, in addition of a perfect control of all aspects of modern computing, a knowledge constantly updated of technical developments of materials, components, software and peripherals as well as new methodologies and procedures. These skills can only be acquired by field experience confronted daily to management, maintenance and evolution of these issues.

However, it is difficult for ship-owners or technical management teams, to have internally these skills, essential to define the most relevant specifications and / or to evaluate the solutions proposed to meet these specifications.

Therefore COMPUSHIPS proposes to assist you from the design of an embarked computer system, whether to equip a new ship, or replace an obsolete network. Of course, COMPUSHIPS can also assume technical support to follow the installation on shipyard.

Note: COMPUSHIPS's experience in this field, allows not only seamless integration of the various systems which require to communicate with each others, but also substantial money savings by selecting the best quality / cost of ownership of these equipments, as well as the limitation of design errors or late finding of some incompatibility.

* Computerized Maintenance Management System

CYBERSECURITY

COMPUSHIPS is confronted all days, and since a long time, with cybersecurity problems through the every day more numerous attempts of viral infections, of phishing, of illegal intrusions, of espionage, of malware introductions on board ships or in companies whose we manage IT.

For more than 20 years we have been involved in the sector, we have been able to constantly measure the evolution of strategies and techniques developed by hackers, and to adapt our skills accordingly.

COMPUSHIPS was advisor to Maritime Affairs Direction (DAM), for the DAM's contribution to the elaboration of the guidelines "Best Practices for Cyber Security On-board Ships" edited by l'ANSSI (French acronym of Informaton Systems Security National Agency) in 2016.

Maritime cybersecurity is becoming more and more of a major economic issue, whose technical managements and owners are not always aware of, or have a mistaken awareness of (see Article of Marine Electronics & Comunications of 26 July 2016).

Being aware of the cyber security chalenge is the only way to understand that this new business risk would be contained only by the implementation of a comprehensive security policy within each entity (Enterprise / Ship / ... ) and not just by the implementation of automated hardware and software countermeasures.

If one needs to be really convainced, one just has to read the "guidelines-on-cyber-security-onboard-ships.pdf" whose illustration below summarizes quite well the report.

Figure 1. Cyber security awareness as set out in the Guidelines

COMPUSHIPS offers cybersecurity audit, setting and management of solutions, countermeasures and cybersecurity training courses.

ASSISTANCE INSTALLATION CONFIGURATION

The COMPUSHIPS systems are delivered "Plug and Work". This means they are ready to be plugged in by standard users and to be used immediatly (pre-installed with the software, the parameters, the directory tree, the users sessions asked and/or defined by the customer).

They are also, unless otherwise requested by the customer, equiped with a Teamviewer host that allows COMPUSHIPS support team to remotly control computers in order to perform maintenance operations, SFEC Fiber Switch during test onboard

training tasks or assistance.

Despite this advanced preconfiguration,
the onboard technical staff or the crew often has to install and set some software and/or some very specific systems like communication software (LaunchPad, SkyFile, GT Mail, Outlook, ...), or risk management software and CMMS ( computerized maintenance management system).

The synergy of skills achieved with the shared remote access between technical teams of the ship and the support team of COMPUSHIPS allows to perform these installations and settings with a serenity, speed and efficiency hitherto unknown.

It's important to take note that using computers and network equipment of a ship being builded inside the offices at the disposal of technical teams by the shipyard, allows to save time and to reduce the stress during onboard installation.

Indeed no transfer is required, all the data and settings being already setted up before the onboard installation, and the crew already had the opportunity to become familiar with the ship network.

At last, COMPUSHIPS allows, thanks to its experience acquired during shipyard's or operation installation, thanks to the anticipatioon during conception and preconfiguration of the equipment, and thanks to the well established dialogue with the technicians of the satelitte communication systems, a perfect integration of the satellite communications with the COMPUSHIPS network.

SALE of COMPUTING EQUIPMENT ADAPTED TO THE SEA

The environment of onboard computing device submits materials to specific constraints (vibrations, vertical and horizontal accelerations, oxydation, black-out, multi-users...) without any common measure with the ones of shore use.

Full new vessel kit of Client PC preinstalled & ready to be sent

Full new vessel kit of Client PC preinstalled & ready to be sent

COMPUSHIPS has set up a technology watch to follow the developments of the latest IT technologies, and conceive systems and materials using these technologies when they bring noticeable improvments.

These materials and/or systems are then tested and stressed during many months in our workshop before being proposed and installed on the ships of our customers.
This process allows to validate and propose to our customers performng materials, secure and perfectly adapted to a use onboard.

The multi-companies experience of COMPUSHIPS associated with a strong technology watch allows us to build materials keeping in mind the difficulty to send spare parts on many ports of call et the high costs of such deliveries.

This is why our systems dispose of performant auto-reparing systems. Even in the case where the necessity of spare parts sending is established, the achievemnts on the size and weight of COMPUSHIPS computing equipments allow to send spare on almost every vesssel calls in the world, including the one unreacheable to regular equipments, and with quite much lower costs and delivery delays.

This decrease in weight and size can go up to a x50 minoration factor !

MAINTENANCE & OUTSOURCING

The first goal of COMPUSHIPS is a maintenance made easy and a disponibility level of its equipments as good or even better than the ones on shore.

That's why automatic maintenance and backups is systematic on the COMPUSHIPS systems, freeing up time and avoiding stress for the crew members that have more important tasks to perform.

In order to improve even more this fiability and this productivity increase of the crew, COMPUSHIPS equips consistently its equipement with remote maintenance software, allowing the COMPUSHIPS
support team to solve 90% of the usual compuer problem, and even to anticipate them through regular network checks and insoection if these network are under maintenance contract with COMPUSHIPS

As all seafarers know, despite all these precautions,the addition of circonstances like hard navigation condition, intense activity of the ship, lack of check, human errors, etc ... may overcome any material and the computers make no exception.

That's why COMPUSHIPS, as soon as the conception of its products, set up materials allowing onboard reparation and return back to work condition in very short delays, even if the vessel is far away and/or in a harbor with poor infrastructures, and even in the case of severe failure.

Main Application Server SFEC with Autoswap

It's in this scope that, for example, COMPUSHIPS has developed disc servers inert spare system « autoswappable", which in case of irreversible destruction of the disc system, restart in less than 10 minutes and recover backups in less than one hour, by simply pushing 2 buttons !

Once rebooted, the server runs again with a high reliability. It restarts on a completely new disc, unused since the server commisssioning process and only restarted during the restoration swap service.

The crew members just have to remove the failed disc and replace it with the one COMPUSHIPS will send you, ready to be installed and rebooted to do again the same repair in case of another failure.
As the server runs again on a new disc, there is no urgency anymore which let time to wait an appropriate port of call for the reception of the new disc.

To improve even more the service, the outsourcing option anticipates the renewal of computing equipment so that no more equipment will exceed 6 years.

This ensures a total continuity of the entire network of the vessel and its permanent « upgrade » technology, avoiding companies to have to care internaly about such complex problems, which are angry of internal time and ressources, which companies that can’t have anyway an expertise as good as the COMPUSHIPS one that is upgraded everyday by the crossed experiences feedbacks generated by various vessels managments, that use different equipments and navigate in different conditions.

Finally that allows to smoothes IT costs and to anticipate the future entry of IT in maintenance items of the vessel's Classes regulations.

CUSTOM SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS DEVELOPEMENT

Specialized in automated reporting applications based on Microsoft™ EXCEL®, COMPUSHIPS can help you to define specifications and/or to do reporting applications or parameterization, loggings, creation of barecodes, inventory with automatic interfacing with barcodes scanners for inventory applications.

SFEC's applications have made department stores inventories recovering data transmitted by dozen of barcode scanners (more than 100 inventory technicians). They delivered detailed inventories and interpreted tens of thousands of references in less than one hour after the last barcode data was transmitted.

A Such SFEC's application allows O.T.C (Transport Office of Corsica) to check that the airlines companies providing connections between corsican and metropolitan airports are respecting the very complex Public Service Obligations (French accronym is O.S.P, of which an example is available HERE), by monitoring semi-annual forcasted flights programs data and monthly performed flights reports data.

An fun and useful example of the power of Microsoft™ EXCEL® and SFEC expertise can be downloaded by clicking HERE (PlanningAutoSFEC.xls) - [Select "Save as… "].
NB: You must authorize the execution of Macros on your PC for the application to work).

It's a Microsoft™ EXCEL® file which instantly creates a weekly, monthly or annual schedule for any year between 1901 and 2075.
In case of download problem (antivirus security caused by the presence of Macros in the file Microsoft™ EXCEL®), you can download the zipped version HERE (PlanningAutoSFEC.zip).

TRAINING COURSES

In add of cybersecurity training courses, COMPUSHIPS may organize training courses for crews to learn the basics of on-board IT network setting, the maintenance and safety right practises, and teach them the first steps to diagnose and solve a problem on an embarked IT network.