Architecture
Hybrid cloud-edge: the ship decides, the shore learns.
Most ship management software is a web application that happens to be used at sea. Full Ahead is split deliberately in two: an edge runtime that owns the vessel's operational day without any link at all, and a shore cloud that consolidates the fleet, trains the models and hands the intelligence back down when the connection allows.
Edge — onboard
The vessel is authoritative for its own day
- Full local copy of the vessel's equipment register, jobs, certificates and evidence
- Predictive scoring, fatigue windows and expiry alerts computed on board — no round trip
- Every write lands in a durable local outbox first, so a lost link never loses a record
- Works with the antenna blanked: logging, sign-off and audit retrieval all continue
Cloud — shore
The fleet is consolidated where the decisions scale
- Cross-vessel benchmarking, spares forecasting and fleet-level audit readiness
- Regulatory intelligence and model calibration trained across the whole fleet, pushed back down
- Role-scoped access for owners, managers, superintendents and class or charterer reviewers
- Open REST API and signed webhooks for ERP, accounting and procurement systems
Between — link-aware sync
The link decides what moves, and when
- Priority lanes: safety and certificate events first, bulk evidence when bandwidth is cheap
- Delta and compressed transfer sized for VSAT, LEO and metered plans
- Deterministic conflict resolution with an operator-visible reconciliation trail
- Hash-chained ledger blocks so a synced record proves it was never edited after the fact
Why split it this way
Built for the link you actually have
Multi-orbit connectivity is improving fast, but coverage still drops in canals, fjords, high latitudes and alongside. An architecture that assumes broadband fails exactly when an inspector is on board.
Latency where it matters is zero
A fatigue warning before a watch and an overdue-job block at sign-off are worthless three minutes later. Those decisions execute on the edge; only the consequences travel.
Bandwidth is spent, not wasted
Photographs, scans and log attachments are the expensive payload. They queue behind anything that affects safety or a statutory deadline, and move on the cheapest window available.
Provenance survives the round trip
Records are hash-chained on creation. What arrives ashore verifies against what was written on board, which is the difference between a document and evidence.
What it means on board
| Situation | Cloud-only system | Full Ahead Maritime hybrid |
|---|---|---|
| PSC officer boards, link is down | Evidence unreachable until the antenna reacquires | Certificates and evidence served from the onboard copy in seconds |
| Engineer closes a job at 03:00 mid-ocean | Form fails or silently loses the entry | Written locally, queued, synced on the next window with its timestamp intact |
| Fatigue risk detected before a watch | Alert depends on a shore round trip | Scored on board and raised immediately |
| Bandwidth is metered and expensive | Every page load costs data | Only deltas move; attachments wait for the cheap window |
| Auditor questions a record's history | Trust the database | Hash-chained block verifies the record was never altered after creation |