Shipping companies are leaving more than 80% of their vessel data unused, and the cure is not another layer of sensors but a shift from managing ships as isolated units to treating entire fleets as one connected operational network, according to SmartSea CEO Kris Vedat.
Fleets as intelligent operational networks
The idea that every ship should be treated as an isolated operating environment is becoming obsolete, Vedat argues. As vessels become more closely connected to shore teams, ports, suppliers and performance centres, the industry needs to stop thinking ship by ship and instead manage fleets as integrated operational networks.
"The future fleet should be treated as one intelligent operational network, allowing expertise, information and lessons learned to be distributed consistently while preserving the authority and judgement of those onboard," he tells Maritime CEO.
This shift, he says, goes to the heart of what digitalisation in shipping should ultimately achieve. Ships may increasingly function as nodes within a wider network, but the industry is still failing to extract full value from the data those vessels generate.
The data gap: less than 20% operationalised
Vedat estimates that shipping operationalises less than 20% of its available vessel data. "Much of that information remains trapped in separate systems or is used retrospectively for reporting rather than real-time decisions," he says.
The next digital frontier, in his view, is therefore not another wave of sensors, but improving data quality, integration and delivery so existing information becomes a continuous operational advantage.
| Claim | Vedat's position |
|---|---|
| Operationalised vessel data | Less than 20% |
| Next digital frontier | Data quality, integration and delivery |
| Near-term autonomous vessels | Overestimated vs. infrastructure importance |
| Five-year outlook | Emergence of "autonomous decision ecosystems" |
| Biggest scaling obstacle | Structural fragmentation, not technology or cost |
Interoperability before autonomy
Vedat believes shipping is overestimating the near-term impact of fully autonomous vessels while underestimating the importance of the infrastructure that allows different technologies to work together. The less glamorous layers of maritime technology — data orchestration, interoperability and secure ship-to-shore information exchange — could prove considerably more important than the headline-grabbing applications sitting above them.
"The long-term winners may not have the most sophisticated algorithms, but the strongest ability to make maritime data accessible, interoperable and operationally useful," he says.
Over the next five years, he expects what he terms "autonomous decision ecosystems" to emerge, linking vessels, shore teams and maritime infrastructure. AI will play a central role, but only when it is fed by harmonised, real-time operational data. "The real advance will not be automating individual tasks, but enabling fleets to make faster, better and increasingly coordinated decisions as a connected operational network," he maintains.
Fragmentation is the real obstacle
The biggest obstacle to scaling maritime technology is structural fragmentation rather than technology or cost, according to Vedat. Vessel IT, operational technology and connectivity have evolved separately, often over multiple generations of equipment and suppliers. The result is that too many digital projects still become bespoke integration exercises.
"Digital solutions will only scale when the industry adopts common architectures, standard interfaces and repeatable deployment models across entire fleets," he says.
If Vedat could impose one standard across shipping, it would be a universal maritime data and interoperability framework. He is careful to stress that such a framework should not prescribe a single technology supplier. Instead, it should allow competing systems to communicate through open interfaces, reducing integration costs and limiting proprietary lock-in. Such a model, he argues, could also lay the foundations for a genuine maritime platform economy, where new applications can be plugged into existing infrastructure rather than forcing owners to rebuild their technology stack each time.
Consolidation: welcomed or resisted
The risk, otherwise, is that consolidation among technology vendors simply replaces one problem with another. "Consolidation should be welcomed where it improves interoperability, but resisted where it restricts data portability," Vedat says.
For chief supply chain officers and procurement directors who plan around ocean freight, Vedat's assessment puts a number on a familiar pain point: fewer than one in five data points generated by vessels is put to operational use, meaning much of the information feeding logistics planning is retrospective. His proposed remedy — common architectures, open interfaces and repeatable deployment models — is aimed directly at making fleets faster and better coordinated as a connected operational network. Procurement teams evaluating maritime technology vendors will find that the competitive edge may lie less in sophisticated algorithms and more in the ability to make data accessible, interoperable and operationally useful across the full fleet.
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