Future-proofing a global offshore fleet
Boskalis operates the largest offshore fleet in the world. They help protect countries from flooding, keep the Suez Canal open for shipping, and install wind farms. At the same time Boskalis takes ownership for its role in global transitions of energy, power and technology. Boskalis also believes in taking ownership in the global energy, power, and technological transitions. One of their main challenges is to match the current vessel constraints to the expected rate of change. Offshore vessels simply cannot be easily replaced; they are capital intensive and have a lifetime of 30-40 years.
Challenge
Boskalis needs to make its current fleet more agile and ready for the future by adding new operational functions and improving performance and consumption.
Solution
Implementing a flexible edge computing infrastructure, so that Boskalis’s business and IT teams can deploy innovative apps to its fleet.
Result
Faster, lower cost implementation of dedicated apps for eg fuel and emissions reductions. In other words: improved time to value.
Challenges
There are 3 main challenges when making an offshore fleet futureproof:
Multidisciplinary organisation
Boskalis is a huge company, with many different departments and separate initiatives. Having an edge-computing infrastructure bridges the gaps between the data silos and applications. However, implementing this requires a great deal from both the technology as well as the organization.
Security
Boskalis’ vessels operate world-wide in very different configurations and operational conditions. They have a wide range of equipment, which all have their own interface methods. But at the same time, they also need the same high level of security when the data is integrated.
Scalability
Boskalis is the expert in running its own fleet and knows where to add value. However, as with many companies, it’s very easy to start a new initiative, but very complex to complete it. Many initiatives get stuck in the prototype phase. The real success comes when that initiative can be scaled fleet wide.
Solution
We implemented our platform to lift Boskalis’ existing data infrastructure to a secure edge computing ecosystem. Edge application management and infrastructure monitoring were added to Boskalis's Microsoft Azure tenant, plus advanced application and infrastructure security. We took ownership for the support and management, plus provided add-on support for making containerized applications production-ready.
Edge computing
This added new features to Boskalis’s data infrastructure for the deployment and management of containerized applications on their offshore edge devices.
Infrastructure security
Our platform continuously monitors and assesses the health of infrastructure. The Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) with its encrypted data, pipelines and applications ensures the highest level of cyber security.
Containerization
Helin worked with Boskalis’s business and IT teams to containerize and deploy new and existing initiatives for operational excellence. We ensured that these containers were production ready.
Results
Boskalis could put its full focus on initiatives building operational excellence. We supported this by developing the foundational infrastructure.
Quickest time-to-value
New applications were delivered at a significantly faster pace than before. This allows Boskalis to improve its operation at an even higher pace.
High security levels
Our platform maximized the infrastructure security across Boskalis' wide variety of assets and at a lower cost.
Reduced emissions
A vessel-based fuel monitoring application increased crews' awareness of different situations. This helped them identify unnecessary fuel use and then act accordingly.
Open platform
The infrastructure is an open-application platform that allows Boskalis to introduce any performance enhancing app, whether custom or third-party.
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