I N S I D E T H I S I S S U E :

news@BASSnet ™

0 1 : 2 0 0 7

As a growing international ship management company with operational offices in Poland, USA, Norway and the Netherlands, SMT requiredflexible, reliable and easy to use software tools to help manage their procurement needs and safety reporting.

According to SMT IT Consultant Panayiotis Alexandrou, BASS was selected after an extensive evaluation period. “Because SMT has offices in multiple locations, we sought a software solu-tion that was both flexible and did not require a lengthy or expensive training process,” he says. “After our review, BASS emerged as one of the strongest competitors. And now that the systemhas been implemented, we are confident we can reduce costs related to purchasing and improve on our safety reporting.”

BASS general manager Haakon Dalan says the contract represents further evidence that the industry is increasingly recognising the value of software to help reduce costs and improve safety. “The fact that SMT chose BASS over sev-eral other competitors is a clear endorsement the quality of our user-friendly and future proof solutions,” he says.

BASSnet™ 2.0 has been installed on a central server in SMT’s office in Poland and on 26 vessels in the company’s fleet of dry-bulk self-unload-ers. The solution links vessels in SMT’s fleet to the company’s operations in Poland, Cyprus and the Netherlands. BASS Accounting Web Report-ing tool has also been installed to provide online reporting of financial accounts.

Like all modules in the BASSnet™ suite, all the modules work together. BASSnet™ Fleet Man-agement Systems have been developed so that customers can choose to install the entire system or individual modules to manage spe-cific tasks, such as crewing, maintenance, pro-curement and safety reporting. All modules are designed to provide users with comprehensive control over their fleet. Once the solution is in-stalled onboard, easy upgrades are available, al-lowing customers to add new functionalities or modules as their business develops.

“We are pleased to welcome SMT to the BASS-net™ family of customers, and look forward toworking with them more in future,” says Dalan.

E D I TO R I A L : I n v e s t i n g f o r t h e f u t u r e 2

Pace of migration to BASSnet™ gains momentum 2

Database 100% on day one 3

Future-proof community 4

BASSnet™ compatible with Microsoft Vista! 4

Future Proof Business Solutions

www.BASSnet.no

“After our review, BASS emerged as one of the strongest competitors. And now that the system has been implemented, we are confident we can reduce costs related to purchasing and improve on our safety reporting.”Panayiotis Alexandrou, IT Consultant, SMT

SMT Shipmanagement & Transport Ltd, an international ship management and transport company based in Cyprus, joins a growing number of shipping companies seeking future proof solutions with BASSnet™ Fleet Management Systems.

BASSnet™ compatible with Microsoft Vista!

SMT: Streamlining operations with BASSnet ™

BASS will attend Nor-Shipping 2007, scheduled for June 12-19. Please visit our stand located at D07-24 in Hall D, to learn more about BASSnet™. We’lll see you there!BASS at Nor-Shipping!

BASS posts strong results for 2006 4

The marine software industry is at a turning point. As the shipping industry increasingly embraces fleet management solutions, more and more shipping companies are seeking increasingly advanced tools to minimise costs, improve efficiency and streamline their operations. New regulations and the TMSA are also driving the need to implement software solutions in order to comply and also reduce costs related to any increased administrative burden. At the same time, the shipping industry has become dominated by fewer, larger players looking to do business with reliable global suppliers with the resources to offer more and better solutions over time.

Today, the maritime software sector is fragmented and highlycompetitive. In Norway alone, there are between 10 and 15 software suppliers dedicated to the maritime industry. To remain competitive, these companies must allocate significant capital to maintaining the integrity of their existing software, leaving them with insufficient capital to research and develop next-generation software tools for ship operations.

These new market realities will have a significant effect on themaritime software industry. Over the next five years, we will see a trend toward consolidation among software suppliers. Smaller companies without the resources to develop next generation tools will struggle to compete for big contracts while more established companies will gain market share based on their ability to invest in research and development. The successful launch and development of BASSnet™ Fleet Management Systems has given BASS the capital resources to leverage these new market realities.

Indeed, we are pleased to report that our 2006 revenues are up 42 percent over 2005, generating a profit margin of about 26 percent. BASS allocates 25 percent of its operating cost into research and development annually, which brings our R&D budget to be one of the highest in the industry. In the meantime, we continue to develop our technical expertise, implementation skills, and support and service capacity. Recently, we submitted a bid to purchase a ship management software vendor, Star Information Systems (SIS).

While the industry faces many challenges ahead, we are confident that BASS will not only strengthen our existing position, but play a leadership role by pushing the technologyforward and delivering new and exciting products and services to our growing number of customers. BASS is releasing new products on .NET this spring and these should be of great interest to both existing customers and new ones planning for the implementation of ship management software.

E D i T O R i A L :

Investing for the future BASSnet™ a key tool in TMSAKPis and continuous improvement are now intrinsic parts of tanker shipping,

and soon all shipping. BASS software is TMSA-ready.

TMSA, or Tanker Management and Self Assessment, is like ISM Code on steroids, with higher demands to monitor, measure and improve tanker shipping. BASSnet™ can be a key tool to meet the kind of dynamic approach demanded by TMSA, and improve TMSA results in a way that could contribute to a quality shipping label.

“Maritime IT systems are implicit in TMSA’s KPIs and highly explicit parts of TMSA’s best practice guidance. We’re assuring our systems possess the functionality necessary to optimize a tanker operator’s efforts on TMSA,” says Haakon Dalan of BASS.

Set in place by OCIMF, the Oil Companies’ International Marine Forum, TMSA covers 12 broad areas of tanker operations. It requires the operator to monitor and improve routines and performance, with the aim of ensuring continuous improvement across the tanker shipping industry, and fewer, and less serious, accidents.

TMSA requires a very dynamic approach to ship operations. Without the software tools to enable improved efficiency, transparency, reporting and follow-up, achieving TMSA ratings are difficult to achieve.

“Tanker operators equipped with the appropriate tools to handle TMSA’s requirements also see bottom-line benefits. Improving oversight of undesired events, their cost and targeting causes results in lower operational costs, and – in the longer run – lower insurance expenses,” says Dalan.

BASSnetTM Fleet Management Systems enable greater accident analysis, experience transfer, more consistent operating standards and maintenance and overdue job alerts, which are among the areas of improvement in TMSA. BASSnet™ will continue its dialogue with tanker operators to help them meet their needs with respect to TMSA.

Pace of migrationto BASSnet™ gains momentum

When BASS announced the launch of BASSnet™ in 2005, the company was unsure howtheir advanced new product suite would be received by the market. But according toBASS general manager, sales, Jaume Mortensen, the company’s decision to rebuild its entire suite of software products on the Microsoft.NET platform has paid off. “Four years and several upgrades later, we are seeing a real shift in the market toward oursolutions,” he says.

In the past year, BASS has experienced a tremendous interest in BASSnet™ from shipping companies, many of which have migrated from Star IPS, a competing system developed by SIS. BASS has migrated a broad range of customers to BASSnet™ including TNKC, a subsidiary of the Japanese-based shipping giant K-Line, Transpetrol, International Tanker Management, RCL, Barber Ship Management and the Latvian Shipping Company.

Martin Bjørnebye, BASS general manager of R&D notes that solutions provided by many competitors are using older technology, such as Visual Basic 6.0, which is no longer being developed and supported by Microsoft. By contrast, BASSnet™ Fleet Management Systems are built on Microsoft.NET, a stable, future-proof platform, which enables much easier support and upgrades of their fleets – tasks that often can cause a lot of headaches and drain resources from shipping companies.

Mortensen notes that while the implementation process can be challenging, the company has gained so much experience replacing other systems with BASSnet™ solutions, the migrating process has become almost routine. “Our work in this area has generated a lot of positive feedback from new and existing customers,” he says. “And as more companies embrace our future proof solutions, we expect that BASSnet™ will soon represent the industry standard for fleet management software.”

in the past year, BASS has won contracts from a broad range of shippingcompanies in Europe and Asia and has successfully enabled the migrationof 200 vessels from Star iPS, a competing system, to BASSnet™.

“The industry is beginning to recognise not only thevalue of BASSnet™ Fleet Management Systems, butwhy it is superior to our competitors.”Jaume Mortensen, BASS general manager, sales.

www.BASSnet.no

F L E E T M A i N T E N A N C E :

Database 100% on day one Planned maintenance works as well as the database that drives it. BASS’s Database Factory has received a big vote of confidence.

www.BASSnet.no

Database production and conversion are the kind of time-consuming and painstaking jobs that need to be done, and done well. Classification societies and their surveyors examine maintenance systems closely, and poor or inaccurate database population quickly becomes costly.

“Surveyors can work much more quickly if the maintenance system is accurate and up-to-date, and the database is class-approved. Our vessel-specific database production organises inventory,components and jobs in such a way that work onboard and inspection can be done as efficientlyas possible,” says Sujit Kumar Das Sarma, BASS Head of Department for the database factory.

Since 2000, Das Sarma and his team in Kuala Lumpur have been building databases, either from scratch, or converted from other maintenance systems. Their office is covered with the stacks of manuals, maker’s lists and technical data that become the raw material of maintenance systems.The advantage to this kind of database production, compared to the kind of generic database provided by many maintenance system suppliers, is that it is specific to the vessel and the operator and ready to go from day one. It is an argument that has been bought 450 times.

Return customersPast projects include NYK Line, Taiyo Nippon Kisen Company, Tai Chong Cheang Steamship, Barber Ship Management, Golar LNG, Transpetrol and RCL. Last year, NYK Line and Barber showed their confidence in the database factory by turning to

them to populate the databases for various types of vessels, including LPG and LNG vessels, and FPSO.

“Building databases for LNG vessels or FPSOs is a similar, but larger, process, as these facilities may have 3,000 components compared to the usual 1,500. They are also more complicated, with more sensitive systems. Our first LNG took a bit longer than usual, but now that we have the experience, we can build LNG databases as quickly as we do for other vessel types.” says Das Sarma.

Das Sarma explains that his team has delivered databases with full stock listings for newbuildings, converted databases from practically all other major maintenance systems and developed a super-database that compounds all of their experience.

“We can offer a kind of best-practice on differentcomponents and models because we have worked with so many databases,” says Das Sarma.

We can offer a kind of best practice on different components and models because we have worked with so many databases,” Das Sarma, BASS Head of Department for the database factory

news@BASSnet™– the corporate newsletter from BASS

The paper clip wasinvented by NorwegianJohan Vaaler in 1899.Li BASSnet FleetManagement Solutions,the paper clip is simple,

effective and future proof – an easy to usetool meeting the demands of ship owners,today and tomorrow.

Future Proof Business SolutionsPublisher

Europe/the Americas

BASS AS

Lysaker Torg 8

P.O. Box 68

1324 Lysaker

NORWAY

Asia/Pacific

BASS Sdn. Bhd.

Level 7, KUB.com

12, Jalan Yap Kwan Seng

50450 Kuala Lumpur

MALAYSIA

Editorial office

Tel: +603 7490 6880

Fax: +603 7490 6881

Contact@BASSnet.no

Editor-in-Chief

Julie Wong

Julie.Wong@BASSnet.no

BLUE International

Communication

Editorial production

& graphic design

BLUE International

Communication

news@BASSnetTM is published

quarterly. The opinions expressed

in this newsletter are those of the

authors or persons interviewed

and do not necessarily reflect the

view of the editors or BASS.

www.BASSnet.no

All rights reserved. 2007

www.BASSnet.no

Future-proof community

Once again, BASS has backed up its pledge to engage clients in product development efforts. At the most recent customer forum in Phuket, Thailand late last year, knowledge exchanged between BASS and customers during workshops will result in coordinated progress towards future-proof solutions which streamline maritime operations.

“These customer forums are vital strategy sessions where we discuss new technical developments, explore new possibilities and gather input from managers and super-users, so that our future-proof suite will evolve with clients’ needs and operations,” says Haakon Dalan, BASS general manager, product management.

IT managers and representatives from Barber Ship Management, World Wide Transport, K-Line Ship Management, RCL Ship Management, Kristian Gerhard Jebsen Skipsrederi, NYK Ship Management and Thome Ship Management took part in

workshops focusing on three strategic areas: Operations and Safety Management; Maintenance, Procurement and Accounting; and Crew and Payroll Management.

BASS Product Manager Rajesh Purkar walked attendees through new developments in the BASSnet™ suite module by module, with a focus on gathering input that will lead directly to adjustments in the next version. “The kind of prototyping we did with SAFIR, whereby we use customer feedback to guide our efforts, is a strategic priority,” says Purkar.

BASS customer forums represent a gathering of what might be called the BASS future-proof development community. This community combines the best thinking of both developers in BASS and partners at customers’ operations to develop maritime IT solutions that are optimal. The next BASS customer forum will take place in Kuala Lumpur in September. For an overview of

topics and presentations from the last customer forum in December 2006, send an email to Julie.Wong@BASSnet.no

The BASS customer forum in Thailand in December featured workshops where users directly influence product development.

BASS is pleased to report that 2006 revenues are up 42 percent over 2005, generating a profit margin of about 26 per cent. According to BASS’ Managing Director, Per Steinar Upsaker, industry demand is rising for an integrated solution delivered by a supplier with the financial strength to act as a long-term partner.

“We see that many shipping companies have become increasingly reluctant to implement software that is based on old, de-supported technology platforms, such as Visual basic, 6.0,” he says. “No one likes to implement old technology across a fleet and then later discover that they need another implementation project to replace it. BASSnet™ is built on a future proof platform, Microsoft.NET, and it is fully compliant with Microsoft’s latest operating system, Vista, which often comes as standard with new PCs nowadays.”

In 2002, BASS took a leadership role by starting to develop its products on Microsoft.NET, a reliable, future proof application platform which offers value-added functionalities and with the

launch of BASSnet™ 2.0 in 2006, the company delivered improvements on a platform that most of its competitors still have not started to develop software for.

While results for the first quarter of 2007 are not yet available, Upsaker says prospects for this year are bright and with the launch of BASSnet™ 2.1 scheduled for release this spring, the company will offer new products and functionality to further streamline operations for shipping companies.

As supplier of fleet management solutions

based on the Microsoft.NET platform,

BASSnet™ software is compatible with the

new Windows operating system, Vista. After

the launch of Microsoft Vista earlier this year,

many surveys have concluded that a host

of popular applications fail to execute, or

have problems running properly on this OS.

“Microsoft.NET provides a layer of insulation

between the BASSnet™ application code

and the Windows operating system, and this

drastically reduces the efforts we need to

spend on compatibility issues,” says Martin

Bjornebye, BASS general manager R&D.

“Many shipping companies are currently in-

vesting in new PCs to their ships where Vista

is often pre-installed, so Vista compatibility is

crucial issue to be considered.”

BASS posts strong results for 2006 BASSnet™ compatible with Microsoft Vista!

Fuelled by the growing demand for integrated fleet management software built on a future proof technology platform, BASS showed significant revenue growth and healthy profits in 2006.

Like the paper clip, invented by Norwegian Johan Vaaler in 1899.BASSnetTM Fleet Management Systems is

simple, effective and future proof – an easy to use tool meeting the demands of ship owners, today and tomorrow.