Wilhelmsen and Høegh use DNV's standard IT infrastructure
http://www.dnv.com/software

Shipping companies Wilh. Wilhelmsen and Leif Høegh are using the IT infrastructure system developed by DNV for its own internal use, VerIT4Net, in their offices. 

VerIT4Net is a standardised approach to building up a company-wide information technology infrastructure, taking into account factors like computer operating systems, networking technologies, e-mail servers and basic software installations (eg Outlook). 

There are many different ways of putting together a standard office infrastructure, but DNV has developed one which it knows will work.

For companies with 4,000 employees around the world, such as DNV, putting together the infrastructure in a standardised way, so that systems work properly and are easy to maintain, is a challenge. It makes it much easier if you can use methods which are already tried and tested. 

"You can get white papers on Microsoft, which outlines all the different options, how you set it up - but they don't give you a recommended set-up," says Bjørn Berger, key account manager in DNV IT Solutions and co-ordinator of Marinet. 

"What DNV has done in our solutions is taken all the white papers - and made a set of documentations - that specifies, if you do this and that, it will work. 
Instead of 15 different options, we give them one way of using it. That becomes a tried and tested solution."

"We know this works. If you follow the guidelines and do it this way,
It will work and it will be easy to maintain." 

VerIT4Net was developed at DNV in 2001, and rolled out across all DNV employees in 2002, with nearly 4,000 users by the end of the year. In a subsequent survey, nearly 80 per cent said they were satisfied with the IT equipment and almost 100 per cent satisfied with the e-mail solution. The system handles over 60 million e-mails a year. 


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Example infrastructure

To give an example specification computer infrastructure for a small company with 7 computers: 

The computers are networked together with a single router, with an ADSL (internet) line also plugged into the router. A file server and printer server can be plugged into the router, with a printer plugged into the printer server.

All files on the server are backed up onto a portable hard disk every week, and all files are backed up onto a spare hard disk every time they are saved. Critical files are backed up every night to a remote location. 

The computers can all run Windows XP and Office, with virus software onboard. All software installation CDs and license codes are kept in a secure place. 

An administrator should check computers have the latest Windows updates and virus definitions every month, defragment hard drives, and replace computer hard drives every 4 years. 


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Shipboard

The next development with MarIT4Net is to build up a shipboard infrastructure.

It will not specify in detail which satcom equipment ships should use, or which software, but will specify which type of computers they should use, what protection they should have against ship vibration and dust, what type of hard drives, what kind of protection against viruses they should have, what operating system, what kind of printer and how it should be attached.

DNV Software is keen to work with the shipping companies in the Marinet group (IUM, Wilh Wilhelmsen and Iverships), and other shipping companies that might be interested, to work out the best way to put together shipboard computer infrastructure.

Marinet is an informal group of shipping companies, communications companies and software companies, where each company funds its own activities, geared around improving the utilisation of ICT in shipping.

"We're going to do a project - to get shipowners and managers in - we want 5/6 to help us specify the requirements for an onboard infrastructure," says Mr Berger.

"The objective is to try and get shipowners to come together and discuss it - see if they can think of requirements to get for the future," he says. "Then its up to us - to see if we can provide a solution which fits that spec."

Marinet is committed to encouraging the development of web services for shipping, he says. "If you want this web services world to be used more in shipping - you need to get it on the ships. You need an infrastructure onboard that can handle these kinds of systems."

Mr Berger stresses that the specification of IT infrastructure will not go so far as to specify the software that runs on the computers, for example for maintenance or purchasing. 

It will not determine the level of communications the shipping company should have (from Inmarsat -C up to VSAT broadband). 

"The comms side is a little bit of a separate issue," he says. "I think it should be scaleable." 

"You could say, with a Fleet 55, you can have this type of service and this type of set-up. But the same infrastructure can work with a different communications.
The communications requirement has a lot to do with the applications you put on top."

Mr Berger notes that the more shipping companies that get involved in writing the standard infrastructure specification, the better it will be - and since shipping companies do not compete on their IT infrastructure, there should not be any competitive reasons not to get involved. 

"We want to try to make a club," he says. "We want to get ship partners in - we want to try to reduce the cost of the systems for all that's involved. If we can standardise on common solutions we can reduce the IT cost."