Curious about what we have been up to this year? Watch all our webinars here. We are strengthening our position as the preferred digitalization partner for highly complex industries within the global maritime and energy sectors, and in the past year, we have reached several milestones. The increased demand for our solutions is both a combination of our market-leading products and hard work and the fact that the market is more digitally mature. Digitalisation is now an obvious business benefit for most companies.
Business highlights: In 2021, we signed many new contracts and entered important new partnerships. The demand for our digital twin solution Kognitwin Energy increased in 2021. Together with Shell we set out to create the first-ever fully integrated reservoir to market digital twin for Shell's Ormen Lange field. We also signed an agreement with ExxonMobil to install and evaluate Kognitwin at one of its Guyana facilities. In addition, KDI has several ongoing "proof of concept" (POC) agreements where the customer will test and evaluate Kognitwin on certain installations. This fall we also entered two new strategic partnerships to further develop Kognitwin, with Data Gumbo and FutureOn. With Data Gumbo the objective is to improve supply chain efficiencies by integrating and making blockchain smart contracts available inside Kognitwin. For the partnership with FutureOn we aim to enhance and further develop KDIs Kognitwin and FutureOns FieldTwin respectively, for energy and renewable projects.With our 'ship to cloud' solution, Vessel Insight we have welcomed many new customers and partners. In 2021, KDI has entered into several new agreements with vessel owners, such as Olympic Subsea, Island Offshore, Gøngen, Marinvest, the Norwegian Coastal Administration, Høegh Autoliners, and Dorian LPG (DK). In addition, the company has entered into several agreements with application partners for the marketplace, such as; ABS, ABB, Vessel Performance Solutions, Zegeba, and Bunkermetric. During the year we also launched our new frontend to our maritime digital ecosystem, the Kognifai Marketplace, where our customers can choose from numerous powerful applications that turn their vessel data into value.With our simulation technology, we entered into new contracts for the delivery of simulators to two educational institutions in the Philippines, four different institutions in South Korea, the Northeast Maritime Institute in the US, as well as a contract with The Panama Canal Authority, and Evergreen Marine, amongst others. A big milestone for us in 2021 was the launch of Kognitwin Grid, our digital twin for power grids. Kognitwin Grid is based on our work with the digitization of the energy sector and is a result of a research project where we worked with Microsoft, SINTEF, BKK Nett, Tensio, and Statnett. The two grid companies BKK Nett and Tensio, signed an R&D agreement for further development and testing of Kognitwin Grid. At the end of the year, we were awarded funding for an innovation project for increased grid utilization.With our industrial work surface for well operations, SiteCom, we signed contracts with, amongst others, the Brazilian drilling contractor Ocyan and expanded our collaboration with AkerBP. In the past year, we also launched our new SiteCom Software-as-a-Service (Saas) platform.
There is no doubt that we are on an exciting growth journey. In 2021 we have further strengthened our domain and software expertise by hiring more than 200 new employees globally. We have also strengthened our management team by welcoming Kristin Ruud as Senior Vice President HR, Benedicte Grieg as Vice President Strategy, Pedro Alc?ntara Nunes Neto as Senior Vice President, Digital Wells, and Stein-Roar Sk?nhaug Bj?rnstad as CTO.
Shane McArdle is the SVP Digital Energy at Kongsberg Digital. Combining deep domain knowledge and broad business background, he has extensive experience in driving Digital Transformation for organizations within the oil and gas, new energy and maritime sectors. Shane is a trusted advisor to help organizations to adopt new technologies and services moving the industry forward with their digital roadmaps.
We thrive when we are out in the market meeting customers and partners. We are firm believers in collaboration and knowledge sharing between different companies, institutions, and industries. So, when it was possible to both travel and meet physically again, we have attended several conferences and fairs to both share our knowledge and learn from others.The fall of 2021 saw a lot of travel activity, as we attended and held presentations on several conferences, such as Web Summit in Lisbon where we discussed the impact of AI on sustainability and how technological advancements can lead to more sustainable businesses and societies. Also, we went to the US to meet Congress members.We have used digital platforms to connect with the market and share our knowledge. The past year we continued hosting our Power Hours webinars with live sessions where we update our customers and others on our products and how they can lead to smarter businesses. You can find all the recordings here. We also published a 6-step digitalization blueprint, built on our experienced Vessel Insight Customer Success team?s expertise and best practices from helping customers accelerate efficiency, safety, and sustainability.
As we are well on our way in the new year, I wish you all a great 2022, and I can promise you that this year will be another great chapter in KDIs (so far) short history. There is a lot of exciting news heading your way, as we continue to digitalize and develop some of the world's key industries and sectors for the future.
