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Global shipping is one of those industries that are yet to discover APIs. They are currently in awe of FTP and XML for EDI though the way they use it is to stuf

Global shipping is one of those industries that are yet to discover APIs. They are currently in awe of FTP and XML for EDI though the way they use it is to stuff as much as possible into the general catch-all tags, because they cannot agree on the schemas. It's the land of mainframes, T-SQL, Excel, and CSV. I have worked with those global players and the way they run IT project is appalling. Blockchain is way too futuristic for them and they kinda miss faxes. People who genuinely want to change things are frustrated, because no matter how modern their own solution are they have to build integrations that work with something put together thirty years ago, undocumented, and without any guidance or help from the incumbent who then proceeds to not sign off on the project and forces the partner to use the old document flows. Worry not, there will be between 5 and 7 developers in each meeting and the integrator's developers are not allowed to talk directly with the incumbent's developers. I promised myself to never work with those guys again.

m00dy 4y ago
yes, because it is not a competitive industry. A bunch of families dominating the whole industry.
- duxup 4y ago
  Naw man the whole industry is generally backwards. It's not one or two companies.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    So backwards that basically everyones lifelyhood can depend on it. So, job well done, one could say.
gbro3n 4y ago
The problem of old technologies isn't specific to the shipping industry, this is true for many large, long running industries where working systems matter. You see old technologies in banking and you see it in transport for example. Shipping has a better fitting use case for blockchain than many industries due to interoperability with third parties and the need for tracking and auditing. Maersk won't have bet the farm on this, I'd be inclined to see it as leading a forward looking experimentation with new technologies that hasn't panned out.
superice 4y ago
As somebody in the industry: You're absolutely right. The other way to look at it is that there is a lot of low-hanging fruit, and it is a multi billion dollar business opportunity.

m00dy 4y ago

yes, because it is not a competitive industry. A bunch of families dominating the whole industry.

duxup 4y ago
Naw man the whole industry is generally backwards. It's not one or two companies.
- hef19898 4y ago
  So backwards that basically everyones lifelyhood can depend on it. So, job well done, one could say.

gbro3n 4y ago

The problem of old technologies isn't specific to the shipping industry, this is true for many large, long running industries where working systems matter. You see old technologies in banking and you see it in transport for example. Shipping has a better fitting use case for blockchain than many industries due to interoperability with third parties and the need for tracking and auditing. Maersk won't have bet the farm on this, I'd be inclined to see it as leading a forward looking experimentation with new technologies that hasn't panned out.

superice 4y ago

As somebody in the industry: You're absolutely right. The other way to look at it is that there is a lot of low-hanging fruit, and it is a multi billion dollar business opportunity.