Bahri organizes inaugural edition of “Sailing the BigData Era 2016” Forum

Bahri, a global leader in logistics and transportation convened key global maritime industry stakeholders at the inaugural edition of the Bahri “Sailing the BigData Era 2016” Forum to discuss the need, solutions and potential impact of big data computing. The forum was recently held in Dubai and attended by over 150 industry experts, business leaders and decision makers who discussed ways to harness the power of data innovation to enhance productivity, unlock opportunities for growth and transform the existing operations model in the shipping industry.

Highlighting the importance of smart business decisions that result in an increase in the bottom-line and productivity as extremely critical to the overall growth and sustainability of any organization and its capability to grow stakeholder value, Bahri CEO, Ibrahim Al Omar said, “The evolution of technology has impacted nearly every facet of our lives and the maritime industry is no different. There is huge potential for the usage of Big Data computing in the maritime industry, to aid business leaders and senior executives in making informed and confident decisions that result in greater operational efficiency, cost reduction and reduced risk, and provision of value-added customer services.”

“The maritime industry amasses volumes of data, nearly 110 million data points, every day, which can be leveraged through Big Data computing to drive innovations that will have a transformative impact on the global maritime industry,” added Al Omar.

Speaking about the adoption of BigData solutions in the maritime industry to drive better asset utilization and improvements in the top- and bottom-lines, Anwar Siddiqui, Advisor to the Bahri CEO said, “Although Big Data is expected to be the next frontier for sustainable business growth in the maritime industry, it comes with certain challenges such as data capture, curation, storage, transfer and information privacy. Hence there is a need to engineer a solution to manage and analyze the data and derive valuable insights.”

As the pioneer and foremost exponent of data-driven decision-making in the maritime industry, Bahri has created a dedicated Big Data business unit – called BahriData. “Data capture, analytics and conversion into actionable insights will help transform the global maritime industry into a smarter, more informed and better prepared one, to face the demands and challenges of tomorrow,” added Siddiqui.

The Bahri “Sailing the BigData Era 2016” Forum concluded with a presentation on “Value of BigData in Shipping” from Samer Bohsali, Vice President of Strategy& as well as two panel discussions on “Value of BigData in Shipping” and “BigData solutions in the Maritime Industry”. Panel participants included industry experts such Jonathan Lee, CEO, Tankers International, Cameron Mackay, COO, Scorpio Group, Peter Grindrod, Professor, Oxford University, and John Schmidt, President and CEO, McQuiling Partners among others.