As digitalization is maturing in other industries, companies operating in the maritime sector are now, more than ever, ready to jump on board and fully embrace digital innovations. Many have pointed towards digital transformation as the solution to the many challenges the industry is facing. Still, insecurities about the market, access to quality data and difficulties of maneuvering among the many solution providers seem to put a hold on investments. Continuing the series of reports on maritime software solutions, we seek to outline the latest development in the maritime software landscape and provide some insight to the digitalization journey of the maritime sector.

It is no secret the maritime and offshore commercial markets have been slow at adopting and fully benefiting from new digital innovations. The industry is continuing to experience inefficiencies, low margins due to overcapacity, and difficulties of developing competitive advantages among the many homogeneous market players. Decision makers are feeling less confident of economic growth as a result of political uncertainty.


At the same time, the same factors are causing a few early adopters to take on digital innovations as part of the solution for increased competitiveness. In addition, new environmental regulations are soon coming into play, forcing the whole industry to change, driving the need for innovation.

Risk averse or not, most market players see many benefits to new digital solutions.

Despite the slow adoption among customers, the maritime software landscape is booming. Close to 400 different solutions where identified across six categories, more than a doubling compared to 2018.

As the maritime industry is continuing its digital journey, many newcomers have spotted the great opportunities and the untapped potential of the market. As last year’s report stated, innovative start-ups was expected significant increase in the number of vendors over the next one to three years. However, this has already happened.


Established companies are now being challenges by new players. The increase of start-ups in the maritime software landscape can be explained by the low capital requirements of new software development. API’s are enabling communication between components like open source, microservices and cloud architecture, removing entry barriers completely. Investors are also seeing the potential and a number of accelerator programs exclusive for digital maritime solutions is fueling the market with start-ups. Still, the incumbents are said to have an advantage by brand reputation in the conservative industry, if they are able to innovate rapidly enough.

Common data infrastructure - Digitalization requires access to quality data from the vessels. Not only does each ship represent a unique configuration, but aspects such as poor or no connectivity and various vendor systems onboard renders standardization near impossible. Historically, the complexity of digital enablement has been associated with high costs nulling out the sizable OPEX reductions digitalization enables. Hence there is a need for a solution that gives maritime operators a low-threshold, viable way to start their digitalization journey

A new mindset - This includes dealing with protection and unwillingness to share data, lack of trust in the digital solutions and the data. By overcoming these challenges, we will move from talking about digitalization, to actually being digital.  

With an ambition of being a driving force of digitalization in the maritime industry, Kongsberg Digital created Kognifai, an industrial digital platform and ecosystem, to help companies realize their digital transformation. Kognifai is tailor-made to gather, structure, store, and analyze industrial data for reuse in value-adding solutions and applications delivered by KONGSBERG and partners.

Addressing one of the main challenges for accelerating digital transformation, Kognifai enables customers to cost-efficiently capture and aggregate quality data from their assets, and securely transfer it to the cloud using the Kognifai infrastructure.

As an open ecosystem, Kognifai also enables customers to seamlessly integrate with their supply partners and cost-efficiently test out new ideas, and new operating and business models.

Through the Kognifai Marketplace, customers have a large range of leading applications and services that can turn their data into business value - ranging all the way from advanced vessel performance to basic administrative tools.

In turn, this helps the maritime industry prepare for the future.

In KONGSBERG we believe in collaboration. Therefore, we created an extensive partner program to ensure the leading software applications are made available to maritime customers globally. The open ecosystem of Kognifai makes it easy to add and integrate applications from partners and customers alike, providing even more business value to all parties involved.

The Kognifai Partner Program was successful launched in Desember 2018 and has since received interest from companies all over the world. With a mission of becoming the number one ecosystem within maritime industry, Kognifai now consists of a rapidly growing network of partners and solutions, all available to customers through the Kognifai Marketpalce.

Through the partner program, KONGBERG shares its extensive maritime expertise, widen the market reach of our partners and accelerate innovation and new solutions together. By finding the best combinations of knowledge and technology, the Kognifai Partner Program is helping the industrial world to unlock the tremendous potential that lies in better use of data and new software tools.

Do you want to learn more about how Kognifai can help your business take advantage of digital transformation? Or would you like to learn more about becoming a Kognifai partner? Contact us! 

Vigleik Takle
SVP Maritime Digital Solutions Kongsberg Digital 
+47 488 40 870

Bent Erik Bjørkli 
VP Kognifai Partner Program Maritime 
+47 322 85 401

Leni Larsen Marøen
Manager Strategic Partnership, Maritime Digital Solutions
+47 9523 57 01