In a nutshell MARSSA (www.marssa.org) is the first open source community-driven project in the marine industry: www.marssa.org
MARSSA will serve as the base for integration, compatibility and interoperability of electronic systems in the marine industry. With MARSSA the marine industry will become opportunity-driven and innovative with enhanced competitiveness. The customers and users will enjoy very high quality, reliable products and systems with seamless interoperability and a low threshold for introduction of the latest technologies. At the same time the total cost of ownership will be radically reduced”
The MARSSA project is under the umbrella of the MARSEC-XL Foundation (www.marsec-xl.org).MARSEC-XL Foundation sets out to shape the digital future of the marine industry through the application of Marine Systems and Software Engineering. MARSEC-XL, an “innovation hot-spot” for the marine industry, provides an unbroken sustainable innovation chain encompassing a range of activities from applied research, education and training to business operations and technology transfer. MARSEC-XL serves as a neutral ground where internationally leading brands, start-up companies and academic institutions work collaboratively. Founded in Malta in 2007 with strong industry support, MARSEC-XL is now building a global Community for Marine Software Engineering.
Zak Borg from MARSEC-XL will be Presenting a talk at the upcoming MeeGo Conference in San Francisco (23rd May-25th May) entitled “MeeGo @ Sea”.
At the MeeGo conference this May we are basically going to highlight the marine market to the MeeGo community and how MeeGo can penetrate this market through the MARSSA platform. The marine industry is very fast with around 30,000,000 vessels out there and most of these guys have lots of cash available, so instead of old ugly looking grey boxes on these boats we think there should be open source front ends such as MeeGo front ends.
Session Summary:
The marine industry sustains some of the world’s most complex and diverse vehicles equipped with sophisticated, software-determined devices. Despite such a market, the industry is highly segmented with heaps of different players all promoting their own proprietary solutions. MARSSA, MARine Systems Software Architecture, is the first open source community-driven project in the industry, serving as the base for the integration of electronic systems. MeeGo will truly complement the MARSSA platform – currently engineers can only develop custom applications and services for the private cloud found on each yacht. A vertical working group for the marine industry within MeeGo will truly revolutionize the playing field, challenging these proprietary platforms by enabling engineers to develop innovative MeeGo front end applications. For MeeGo, the marine industry is a unique opportunity to be the first software platform for potentially 30,000,000 vessels to provide a unified
Session Abstract:
When one looks at the automotive industry, software plays a vital role, yet the interaction with the driver is limited to the in-vehicle infotainment system. On the other hand a super yacht can be compared to a small self sustained city, with a wealth of on board equipment, ranging from power management systems to on board fully sized cinemas.
This can be seen as a major opportunity for MeeGo, as the amount of devices on each vessel directly interacting with the crew is enormous; multiply this by all the vessels at sea and it’s very evident that the market is quite substantial.
There are two main segments within the maritime industry: commercial (ships) and leisure (yachts and boats). The world fleet of ships registered amounts to 50,054 as of 31st October 2010 with the total number of boats and yachts registered globally estimated to be around 30 million, with circa 18 million registered in the US alone.
Currently, the marine industry is highly segmented, comprising of a few key players and thousands of SMEs. Today, most marine electronic systems operate on proprietary networks allowing only integration between devices operating on the same network. The lack of an open standard permitting interoperability between devices and systems from a variety of manufacturers is limiting progress and innovation in the field.
MARSSA sets out to provide an open platform, which will serve as a base for the development of standards and, at the same time, an architecture to support the integration of all software-dependent devices and systems on all types of sea-going vessels.
Seamless interoperability will be achieved and a platform stimulating innovation and competitiveness will be provided on a high quality framework based on proven industry standards. MARSSA, as the foundation, will provide 80% of the core technology much needed by the maritime industry, by spreading the cost through the use of open source software and standards such as Linux and MeeGo. This will allow vendors and manufacturers to focus on the remaining 20%, which will provide their value-added differentiating portion.
MARSSA will open a gateway to the marine industry, allowing the front ends found on such vessels to run on the MeeGo open source mobile operating system. The marine industry is a great opportunity for MeeGo as a lot of custom application will flourish, also leading onto a custom application store for the marine industry.
The MeeGo and MARSSA projects go hand in hand, since while MARSSA is opening up the industry and providing a common open source platform, MeeGo will be the interface to the world.
The challenge of today: “how to integrate” will be replaced by “how to innovate” through the MARSSA and MeeGo open source platforms.
With MARSSA & MeeGo a new mainstream will be created in the maritime industry!
“Standardizing what is un standardized”, “Opening what is closed”, “Innovating innovation”
We look forward to seeing Zak at the MeeGo Conference and discussing MeeGo at Sea. Hope to see you there too if you are lucky enough to be there.
