Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company, announced that Samsung Heavy Industries selected AWS as its preferred cloud provider to support its digital transformation. Samsung Heavy Industries is turning to AWS’s expansive infrastructure, unmatched performance, scalability, and industry-leading services to gain competitive advantage in the smart shipping industry. Samsung Heavy Industries leaves the heavy lifting of its infrastructure to AWS, the world’s leading cloud, so that its team can rapidly innovate on its autonomous shipping platform, a system that enables self-piloting of large container ships, LNG carriers, and floating production systems. Samsung Heavy Industries will continue to expand its smart shipping capabilities using the breadth and depth of AWS’s services, including machine learning, augmented reality and virtual reality, analytics, databases, compute, and storage. 

Samsung Heavy Industries’ next-generation smart shipping systems on AWS leverage a wide variety of services, including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, Amazon Relational Database Service, Amazon Simple Storage Solution, AWS Key Management Service, and AWS Cloud Trail to create integrated systems for all vessel-related data collected from land to sea. AWS enabled Samsung Heavy Industries to build a big data analytics ship navigation system using Amazon Red shift which improves after-market customer service for ship owners. Samsung Heavy Industries also leverages AWS machine learning services, including Amazon Polly and Amazon Lex, to provide real-time alerts to its customers about the condition of their ships, and will use Amazon Sumerian to create a virtual replica of the ship cockpit for land-based training and simulations. In addition, by using AWS, Samsung Heavy Industries was able to build an information security management system to respond to cyber threats and is able to provide a highly scalable, secure environment for smart ship technology development, becoming the first Korean smart ship maker to meet compliance requirements of the American Bureau of Shipping.

“We’re digitizing our shipping fleet by using the most advanced technologies in the world to enhance our approaches to shipbuilding, operations, and delivery, and chose AWS as our preferred cloud provider to help us quickly transform Samsung Heavy Industries’ into a cloud-first maritime business,” said Dongyeon Lee, Director of Ship & Offshore Performance Research Center at Samsung Heavy Industries. “By leveraging AWS, we’ve successfully released several smart shipping systems so that our customers can manage their ships and fleets more efficiently, and we continue to test new capabilities for ocean-bound vessel navigation and automation. AWS delivers a highly flexible environment, with the broadest and deepest portfolio of cloud services, that is ideal for accelerating research and development across the company, and it has enabled our developers and data scientists to bring new ideas to market at an unprecedented pace.”

“Leading companies in the industrial space are choosing AWS for the best performance, highest availability, greatest scalability, and an unmatched set of services that enable them to evolve their unique businesses in the cloud,” said Mike Clayville, Vice President, and Worldwide Commercial Sales at AWS. “We’re excited to be fueling Samsung Heavy Industries’ digital transformation, providing them with the services and expertise to rapidly innovate on behalf of their maritime customers and establish a cloud-first strategy on AWS. Their autonomous and smart shipping systems built on AWS will not only enhance their competitive edge, but also bring significant advances to the worldwide shipping industry. We look forward to continuing to support Samsung Heavy Industries on their journey with AWS.”