Eight Year's Partnership
For the past eight years, Xebia has been part of Kongsberg’s journey to the cloud.
The last time our marketing team contacted the developer of state-of-the-art maritime simulation technologies, it had just launched its first ‘simulator-as-a-service.’ It was 2020, and after the prime minister announced that all schools had to close due to Covid-19, Kongsberg reached out to its customers. Gullik Jensen, Product Director of Kongsberg Digital, says, “We were honest about the simulator not being 100 percent ready, but we offered it to them for free anyway. We figured that, given the circumstances, anything was better than nothing. Lo and behold, schools managed to complete their exams, and students still received a certificate through training from the safety of their homes. That was when we knew we were on to something!”
What strides has Kongsberg made since then? Let’s find out!
Kongsberg Digital
For over half a century, Kongsberg has been enriching training and education for seafarers, and its carve-out, Kongsberg Digital, is indispensable in this effort. “At the Maritime division of Kongsberg Digital, we create next-generation software and digital solutions for over half of the 60,000 ships currently sailing the world,” says Jensen. He continues: “We combine the simulation of ships, the environment, and real systems to create a fabulous training tool that allows people to practice with extreme conditions and become familiar with the instruments used on so many ships across the globe.”
Traditionally, Kongsberg’s simulators, a combination of hardware and software, were shipped to schools and training centers worldwide and installed onsite. But, with the company’s huge focus on digitalization, that was about to change!
"This industry offers endless opportunities and potential. Our biggest challenge is to select what will be of most value to our customers.” — Gullik Jensen, Product Director Kongsberg Digital.
Making Simulators Extremely Accessible
The maritime (training) sector was slow to change until sustainability became a priority, and companies like Kongsberg started putting a lot of energy into digitalization and innovating and improving processes, systems, and tools.
The industry is undergoing major change, and as a result, life-long learning is more relevant than ever before. Jensen, “And that’s exactly why we want to make our simulators accessible to anyone, anywhere, anytime. To make that possible, moving from an on-premise to a cloud service was a no-brainer.”
Kongsberg did not decide to create a cloud offering on its own. Jensen, “Our customers asked us to place them at the heart of the transformation. They literally said, ‘The most important thing you can do for us is move simulation training out of physical training centers.’ So that’s what we did!”
"We want to help our customers achieve their goals of a safer maritime industry with better trained and more efficient people, but the cloud was a difficult topic. So we started small and focused on value. Value makes it tangible for everyone.” — Gullik Jensen, Product Director Kongsberg Digital.
In 2020, Kongsberg launched its very first ‘simulation-as-a-service’ on Microsoft Azure, facilitating global access, easy service, and anywhere training for users in the marine, offshore, and maritime industries.
The Benefits of Simulation-as-a-Service
For training institutes and students:
- Accessibility: an online simulator enables students to learn wherever and whenever, in a classroom setting or individually.
- Flexibility: schools can change their subscription to the service to meet their needs instead of investing in a machine they will then (have to) use for the next ten years.
- Cost-effective: bringing the simulator to the cloud reduces upfront costs — a huge hurdle for some schools.
For Kongsberg:
- Financial: monthly subscriptions result in a more stable income for Kongsberg.
- Tapping into a new market: small training institutes with a small budget that would otherwise never be able to work with these simulators because buying them is very expensive can now afford to subscribe to a basic version of the simulator and allow their students to obtain a great certificate.
