Maritime software and eLearning company Ocean Technologies Group (OTG) is automating the integration of data and information across its platforms with the help of SnapLogic, an integration software firm. Digital Ship spoke with the Ocean Technologies Group (OTG) and SnapLogic to find out what this means for OTG.
One of the biggest questions software firms are faced with today is how to integrate data and information consistently and efficiently from a range of services and platforms. This challenge is magnified when acquisitions are made and companies need to integrate new products into their portfolio, requiring changes to the API (application programming interface) to maintain seamless and efficient workflows.
Maritime learning and operational technologies company, the Ocean Technologies Group (OTG) started out as several small to medium enterprises[1] and has acquired various companies to now serve over 20,000 vessels and one million seafarers, delivering solutions from fleet management, crew management, and eLearning. With a range of products and tools offered by the brands, many of which cross over between the three core areas (see figure), sharing and replicating records reliably and efficiently across these platforms was becoming increasingly important for OTG as it sought to create a single source of truth.
Speaking with Digital Ship, Ian Hepworth, chief technology officer at the Ocean Technologies Group explained, “First and foremost, we needed to make sure that we could get consistency in the data that sits within our infrastructure. Secondly, we wanted to leverage our product data into our corporate data to improve consistency of the data and reposition the business to service an entire vertical.”
One way to ensure data consistency across applications is to build an integration platform. OTG turned to US-headquartered intelligent Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) company SnapLogic, a middleware company that builds integration software to help ISVs (independent software vendors) connect their data, applications, and APIs, to improve data flow and access across the organisation.
The benefits of a data management layer
Sitting between the older legacy players and the newer players, SnapLogic uses AI (artificial intelligence) to deliver consistent information and data flow between an ISV’s suite of solutions, enabling the information to be accessed and used effectively by OTG and its customers.
“Previously we had these older legacy players that have built incredible platforms, but the problem is that it’s not possible to take these complex on-premise oriented technology systems and suddenly reverse them into the cloud. So, you end up buying more companies and more systems to create the solution you want, but it becomes increasingly complex. At the other end of the spectrum there are a lot of brand new players with some amazing roadmaps and people, but they’re not yet complete and often lack essential elements like compliance and support, which are particularly important to ISVs like OTG. SnapLogic sits somewhere in between these ends of the spectrum, creating and maintaining these connections so ISVs don’t have to,” explained William Bell, OEM business director at SnapLogic.
For example, within the OTG’s suite of solutions sits its Ocean Learning Platform (OLP), a tool that provides interactive maritime learning, competence management, and crew assessment. The key record inside any learning platform is the seafarer, which contains details such as their rank that is used to determine the kind of mandatory training they must undertake for regulatory compliance. Getting this seafarer record reliability integrated onto each vessel is a challenge, particularly if the ship manager is managing hundreds of vessels and requires a custom interface to be built that connects the ship manager’s HR platform and OTG’s OLP, explained Hepworth.
Building this custom interface is a time-consuming and development intensive process, and while software developers inside organisations like OTG have the capabilities to do so, it is an inefficient and costly use of their time. “By the time we’ve understood the data schemes from our customers, building these integrations can take days or weeks,” said Hepworth, “and software developers weren’t employed to build integrations so simply put, they often don’t want to spend their time doing this.” Furthermore, it’s not just a case of building the integration, it must be managed, regularly updated, and maintained.
This is where SnapLogic comes into play. Its intelligent web-based graphical user interface is based on a low /no code approach that enables anyone to build these pipelines, not just software developers.
“The concept is known as citizen integrators and means that people who are not software developers can do the same piece of work as those software developers,” explained Bell. By using SnapLogic’s integration platform, records from across the OTG brands are reliably replicated, meaning that OTG software developers do not have to spend time manually building new APIs to replicate these records.
Integration repeatability
One significant benefit for OTG in deploying SnapLogic is its ability to deliver integration repeatability. ISVs often spend a significant amount of time implementing integrations because of the lack of repeatability, which sees them having to redo the same work again and again.
With SnapLogic, it automatically analyses previously built pipelines and assesses whether they can be replicated for use with future customers. For companies like OTG where acquisitions and the addition of new products and capabilities are a frequent part of its business model, repeatability is essential.
“When you create an integration, if it’s not a reusable asset, it’s, it’s not a good piece of work,” explained Bell. “Integrations take time and if you can’t keep reusing them, you’re just continuously adding to your workload. If you can reduce the time spent building these integrations from weeks to hours, you can start to imagine how much more time you have to address your customers,” he said. “Ultimately, this means that developer resources can be put back into the product, which then benefits the customer. That’s what automation is about. Giving people and expertise back to the firm and providing better products for your customers,” he noted.
This means new capabilities acquired by companies like OTG can essentially be plugged, without requiring a team of developers to build a new interface. OTG can add new products and acquisitions and SnapLogic will automatically ensure the data is reliably replicated across the platforms.
Improving digital delivery
OTG customers will also benefit from the integration with SnapLogic by being able to better move forward with edge computing and take advantage of communications facilitated by the likes of SpaceX and Starlink.
In June this year, the OTG announced a new Digital Delivery framework to reduce dependence on physical logistics for the delivery of content and software application updates. This digital delivery infrastructure means that OTG’s modules and applications can be delivered over-the-air (OTA) to give customers faster and more secure access to updates.
With SnapLogic now onboard, this Digital Delivery infrastructure will be further enhanced. “Shipping companies have different levels of digital maturity, so what SnapLogic will do is help us to pull any data from anywhere, whether that’s data embedded in training records, data from maintenance records, no matter what level of digital maturity that ship has,” explained Hepworth.
For customers rolling out multiple OTG platforms, this capability will be particularly beneficial. OSM Ship Management, which announced earlier this year that it would use all three platforms from OTG, will soon be able to access all of its raw data via a single capability and manage and manipulate it how they wish.
Having SnapLogic in the middle of its infrastructure as a data management layer will enable OTG to consistently manage data and records from across the 20,000 vessels it services while facilitating scalable, reliable, and consistent growth.
OTG anticipates it will go live with its first customer implementations with SnapLogic towards the end of Q4/beginning of Q1.
[1] The companies include Seagull, Videotel, Marlins, MTS, Tero Marine, COEX and COMPAS.
