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OCENS Mail and Skyfile
Key Issues OCENS Mail outperforms Skyfile because OCENS Mail uses block compression, Skyfile does not, using single file compression instead. Why is this critically important? Let's say you are sending or receiving five, 10 kb text files. Skyfile will compress each of these files individually, on average, at a rate of about 50%. So you will end up paying for a transfer of about 25 kb of email when using Skyfile. On Iridium, including authentication, that will take about 1.5 to 2 minutes to transfer. OCENS Mail will compress those files as a block and achieve an aggregate compression of 95% or better. You end up paying for a transfer of about 2.5 kb of email when using OCENS Mail. On Iridium, including authentication, that transfer will run less then 40 seconds. Skyfile states that it is free. If it is burning 2 to 3 times or more airtime for any transfer in involving more than one file, then it is 'free' in name only. At the end of the month you've paid far more in airtime through Skyfile than you would have spent on the $20 per month OCENS Mail fee. OCENS and OCENS Mail is provider independent. We have no axes to grind for one vendor over another. Our purpose is to provide a reliable and fully supported email package that allows you to spend the least possible amount of money on airtime. Skyfile's purpose is to promote the use of Vizada airtime. Support Speaking of support, OCENS Mail is supported by a local Seattle staff on a 7 day a week basis. Our customers can attest to the fact that the combination of voice, email and skype support rendered by OCENS is unparalleled in the industry. Dealers who do offer Skyfile, do not support Skyfile. Why? Economics. There is no income to them for Skyfile support and they don't train staff to support a product for which there is no income. Skyfile's developer is Vizada, a French company. Support calls go to France. Vizada Americas has a staff of 4 people to cover all of the US and South America. Where does Skyfile support fall in Vizada's priority list? Multiple Access Points Skyfile only works through postpaid accounts activated through Vizada. It does not work over any other service provider SIM nor does it permit receipt of email over channels other than the satphone. As previously mentioned, OCENS and OCENS Mail is provider independent. We work on prepaid and postpaid accounts from any provider and any satellite phone. Moreover, we work with cell phones, wifi, dsl and other connections. So if a boat pulls into a marina where wifi is available, OCENS Mail automatically uses this low (no) cost route to transfer email. Skyfile willnot do that. It is tied to the Vizada activated SIM in the vessel's sat phone. Remember, it's 'free'. Why would they give you software to use on a platform that is not going to generate revenue. No Retraining The multiple access point feature of OCENS Mail allows your officers and crew to use one email client to conduct all of their email. You don't have to learn one client and software package for the satellite phone and another for other connections. Given the many demands on the time of officers and crew this is no trivial accomplishment. Other Benefits File Transfer Module Is forms transfer between ship and shore and persistent issue for your company? If so, the OCENS Mail File Transfer module takes those headaches away. With File Transfer you just save any forms that need to move from your boat to the shoreside office (or vica versa) into a computer folder and OCENS Mail automatically transfers them to the office each time with the next email transfer. And it does while applying maximum compression to the whole set of forms. Likewise, forms incoming to the boat are saved to one neat folder. So forget about attachments and how and where files got save. Just use OCENS File Transfer module to send and receive any forms affecting the vessel operation. The File Transfer module also works with the AMOS vessel management software to accelerate the movement of ship to shore AMOS data. Fuel Monitoring Why not save money on the cost of relaying fuel monitoring information from your vessels to your shoreside offices? OCENS Mail can make a dramatic reduction in those communication costs by relaying that information via email or File Transfer applications. We have had fleets reduce their comms costs for fuel monitoring by an order of magnitude by implementing OCENS Mail deliveries. Crew Accounts The OCENS Mail Enterprise edition allows you to provide private email accounts to crew and officers. It does so, however, while still protecting your communication costs by restricting access to the computer actually responsible for transferring those mails over your satcom. If desired, a billing module is available that permits you to track transfers by each crew account and bill such transfers to the originating crew member. Vessel Tracking OCENS offers two forms of vessel tracking. Our Passive Tracking system, OTrak, sends a vessel position to an email address or secured website each time your vessel sends an email. Posted positions can be viewed by simply accessing the website with your passcode. Our active asset tracking system is marketed as XTracker. This equipment is the most inexpensive vessel tracking system in the world. Based on the Iridium satellite network, coverage is global. Position reporting frequency is controlled by you and can be varied from once every 5 minutes to once every 12 hours. No matter what the sampling rate, the user can poll the equipment for a position at any other time and receive almost immediate feedback on your vessel location. As with OTrak, positions are delivered to a secure website for up to the minute vessel monitoring. Synergy with OCENS WeatherNet Weather-on-Demand Not to be overlooked in a review of the unique capabilities of the OCENS Mail service is the other key member of the OCENS family of satellite services…WeatherNet. OCENS WeatherNet provides access to weather and ocean information anywhere on the globe at a fraction of a cost at which these data can otherwise be retrieved over any satellite connection. WeatherNet offers the full suite of classical weather charts, text forecasts buoy data, radar and satellite imagery produced by NOAA and other national weather services around the world. It also, however, provides arguably the largest collection of next generation GRidded Binary data (GRIB) weather and ocean data available from any source. Be it wind, wave, pressure, precip, sea temperature, sea height, ocean currents or a wide array of other content, WeatherNet has it available. In fact, we’re hard pressed to identify a piece of weather or ocean content that’s not in WeatherNet. And if you find one that isn’t, we’ll add it for you! ... back to main OCENS page |