mobile number for Christine 0043 676 7031700 MAIN HEAD Lotus Notes DECK HEAD Several big shipping companies, particularly in Scandinavia, are moving their ship shore messaging platforms onto Lotus Notes. We took a closer look BODY TEXT Lotus Notes is a communications platform used by over 85 million people, for messaging and work collaboration, including, in the shipping industry, Bergesen and Statoil. The main advantage of Lotus notes, its advocates say, is its ability to incorporate e-mail and messaging together with databases. Other advantages are that it is more configurable to specific business applications and there are fewer problems with viruses (most computer virus problems are associated with programs which send e-mails to all the contacts in an Outlook address book). "The neat thing about Lotus is that it's easy for us to integrate database solutions with e-mail solutions," says Roar Wilhelmsen of Unisea, a Norwegian consultancy implementing Lotus Notes based e-mail solutions in shipping companies. With messaging linked closely to the database, it is easy to configure the software to send automatic e-mail alerts to specific addresses when certain parameters move outside a certain range, for example if a seafarer's health certificates are about to expire. Another advantage of Lotus notes, Mr Wilhemsen believes, is that it is much easier to configure to specific applications than Microsoft is, which is quite important when every single shipping company wants their IT set up in a different way. SUBHEAD Shipboard database applications Unisea has managed to put together some very powerful software applications which saves a great deal of time onboard, simply by connecting different fields in the database together. For example, when a person is assigned to a cabin, the crew lists and shipboard e-mail lists are automatically updated. The crew lists can then be sent back to shore. Other data stored using the system include details of the fire teams, telephone numbers, fire lists, customs list for the US, next of kin information, health certificates, health certificate expiry dates. "You can plan the next crew change, sort people in terms of experience and all kinds of criteria," he says. "If you have a personal injury registration, you can go into the crew database and get that person to link to the personal injury report." The system can be configured to set up all kinds of automatic e-mails related to this information, for example, when the health certificates are about to expire. "All of the data onboard the vessel is exactly the same as the data on shore," he says. "But each vessel only takes the data relevant to it." SUBHEAD Ship shore database replication The Lotus Notes database software already has tools inbuilt for replicating databases between different locations, so that if a certain field is changed in one place it is changed in another place. Thus the same data can reliably be perused in different locations, without the computer in one location needing to dial into the other all the time. This feature is particularly useful to ensure that the data onboard the ship is the same as the data stored on shore about that specific ship. Obviously it is very important to ensure that the systems are configured for minimum ship to shore data transfer; Lotus Notes was not designed for expensive ship-shore data communication and so minimising the data throughput was not a high priority. But Mr Wilhemsen asserts that it is possible to configure the system with very low data throughputs. It is relatively easy to dial into a shipboard database from shore and fix problems, rather than have to expensively send the entire database file to shore if there are any problems with it. The database replication tools also put a new slant on the possibilities of e-procurement from onboard. Rather than sending a comma separated text file between ship and shore describing the ship's purchasing requirements, as many e-procurement systems do, the data is simply typed into the shipboard database and automatically updated in the shore database. All company shipboard forms can be configured in Lotus Notes, rather than the more standard Microsoft Word or Excel. The data can be entered in form templates onboard ship, to be automatically available in the databases both on ship and on shore. A lot of the systems demand is to handle the large volume of reporting forms from onboard vessels. The seafarers are required to report all near misses, near accidents, injuries, equipment damage, and non-conformity to procedures, which goes on onboard the vessel. The form templates can be configured and edited from shore. "If the forms need to be changed, say if a company buys a new vessel, the company does not need to send out a CD with the new forms to the vessel; they can do it all by the satellite link," he says. It is easier to categorise and refind shipboard files using Lotus, he asserts; you don't have the problems with two shifts on the same vessel saving files in different locations, because the choice of file save location is made by the computer system. This also means that files cannot be misplaced. SUBHEAD Inspectors Unisea has also developed software packages for ship superintendents, enabling to access all the data they need on their mobile computers. Every superintendents, has a mobile computer with a cellphone. They can connect with a server by GSM and work on our database applications. They can also easily dial into the system when they are out of the office and make any inspector decisions which otherwise would hold things up. "One of the inspectors with Solstad shipping said if anyone took away his computer he wouldn't be able to handle anywhere near the workload," he says. SUBHEAD What if we like Excel? Unisea observes that many people believe that they have to make a choice between using Lotus office and communications tools or Microsoft office and communications tools, when this is not the case. Many users of Lotus notes messaging systems still use Microsoft office for word processing (Microsoft Word), data crunching (Excel) and managing their personal contacts and diary (Outlook). Lotus Notes is a solution for managing e-mail, equivalent to Microsoft Exchange. SUBHEAD Offshore community Unisea's biggest customer base is within the offshore supply community, which have similar demands for a ship-shore e-mail system as the deep sea maritime industry, but typically need a much more powerful system. An offshore vessel can typically have 50 to 140 seafarers onboard, with a very high associated e-mail workload, for example assigning people to cabins and muster stations. "The demands on these vessels are as high as they get," comments Mr Wilhemsen. "Its much more important to have efficient tailor made computer systems." BOX TEXT Clients of Unisea include Solstad Shipping (www.solstad.no) and Wilson Ship (www.wilsonship.no). It provides the complete outsource information technology service to Solstad. There is no website but Roar Wilhelmsen, managing director, can be contacted directly on krv@unisea.no