On the Agenda for e3

From appearances at METSTRADE this week to the latest yacht to adopt Kymeta flat panels, here is the latest news coming from the superstar team at e3.

METSTRADE

The annual METSTRADE show in Amsterdam is one of our favourites and this year we’ll be on stand 11.111 at the Superyacht Pavilionfrom 19^th – 21^st November with our partners Cobham and Speedcast. We’ll be happy to discuss all your connectivity needs including our premium IT offering - the Active Support Agreement - which you can read about below.

For those interested in superyacht new build and refit projects, e3 will also be with Tijssen Elektro on The Consortium stand 10.400.

Feel free to drop by our stand and if you’d like to make an appointment in advance, please email connect@e3s.com

Sail easy with BIG DATA Caribbean  

Our BIG DATA Caribbean service uses just one SIM, so there’s no need to change SIMs between islands and no chance of accidental roaming and bill shock. On-top of that you don’t need to sign up for a bundle, you simply pay for the GBs you use. New for this season is that daily usage is now available online from our “my e3s” client portal and the SIM can be upgraded to our BIG DATA GLOBAL service without the need for a new SIM.

Proud to partner with Cobham

Employing more than 11,000 people across five continents, Cobham is one of the leading names in global technology – and one we are always delighted to be associated with. The company’s innovations are used across a wide range of sectors, with its Sailor brand being possibly the best-known antennas for large yachts. As a mark of their capabilities, the Volvo Ocean Race uses Cobham's cutting-edge satcom for the delivery of action-packed video and audio. e3 actually installed the first Fleet 77 in 2002 and have been a Silver Partner since 2014. As Mads Ebbesen, Cobham’s Sales Manager for Maritime recently pointed out to me at the Monaco Yacht Show, e3 are a lot more than just a partner, but a source for industry insight and a sounding board for new ideas. It’s a relationship we are extremely proud of and look forward to continuing into the future. Cobham will be joining us at METS – so please join us for a chat about the latest innovations in satcom.

A Remote Rescue 

For any yacht, the failure of a critical IT system is bad news, but mid-season with guests onboard, this couldn’t come at a worse time. Such a catastrophic failure recently happened to one of our customers, whose main server powered everything from emails and shared files, to accounting and ship’s information database.

During any ‘guests on’ situation, an ETO has a myriad of duties and responsibilities all over the yacht, and simply does not have the time or resources to deal with such a serious situation.

Fortunately, this yacht had an e3 Active Support Agreement with full remote monitoring, and within 30 minutes of the problem being detected, e3 had mobilised its most senior IT engineers.

Active Support ensures e3 has direct access to the yacht’s network and our engineers first priority was to restore as many services as possible from backups using a temporary machine.

With basic IT services restored, it was quickly determined that the server was beyond field repair, and a new machine was needed. e3 has a global network of hardware suppliers, so all it took was a quick check of the yacht’s itinerary and two days later a brand-new server was on board the yacht. In terms of on-site assistance, all that was needed was for the server to be installed in the rack.

With e3’s advanced remote access capabilities, the entire server was commissioned without taking up the time of the ETO. All IT services were restored from backups and temporary services moved back to the main server, and after a full series of tests and performance checks, the system was pronounced fully restored.

All of this was accomplished within a few days of the failure and with only the bare minimum of assistance from the crew. Without an Active Support Agreement, it would have been a different story; the yacht’s situation would have been far worse with much longer downtime periods, much more of the ETO’s time needed, and with the additional cost of having to fly engineers out to the yacht at short notice to perform the initial recovery work and to rebuild the entire IT system.

Kymeta update

The latest yacht to adopt Kymeta flat panels is the S/Y Xasteria - 170’ (52m) Perini ketch built in 1995. The owner was keen to keep the clean lines of the yacht which would not have been possible with the addition of twin dome VSAT antennas. The decision was therefore made to go with two Kymeta flat panels installed by the e3 engineering team and recessed into wells so that they cannot be seen from the side. The yacht has spent the summer cruising Greece and Turkey with excellent connectivity thanks to airtime provided from e3 using their new eSAT service.

Cruising in the same region, is the now ‘domeless’ White Rose of Drachs. Captain Andrew Schofield contacted e3 on behalf of the owner to thank us for providing excellent communications and TV throughout the season – it always makes us proud to be thanked for doing something well, especially when it’s for such a distinguished vessel.

Images: e3/The Islander