MeeGo @ sea!

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”