15 minute read
Control Rooms, no longer just for transport and safety
Chiara Benedettini
A sector in great evolution
From the acceleration given by hybrid work to the rooms partition, from the growing habit of softwarebased services to the servitization: Control Rooms are at the centre of a great change, both in method and in the market, with the expansion to new applications in vertical sectors. And just as many opportunities
Until a few years ago, Control Rooms were considered a market in themselves and rather specific compared to the "rest" of the Systems Integration applications: they were used in transport to monitor and control traffic, or in the Security field to simultaneously view different places through video surveillance systems, for example, and a “great classic” have been - and still are - the rooms of the police forces but also of private surveillance. More recently, the applications have expanded to the world of connectivity and energy, therefore to the possibility of monitoring consumption and services within a building, a factory, an office complex, flowing smoothly into the world of Building Automation. But it was precisely the pandemic that gave Control Rooms a further development, made possible by the evolution of technologies: the concept of the control room freed itself, so to speak, from its historical applications to become more versatile, i.e. an environment where it is possible to monitor, compare, evaluate and, in some cases, control large amounts of data, of any nature and type. Very easily we came to the infinite applications of today, from the management of meeting rooms to the Finance market, from services to Revenue Management, up to the IoT world. A technological evolution common to the whole world of professional Audio Video, on the other hand: the progressive and inexorable adoption of Over IP for the transport of signals. Although not yet fully accepted. We were accompanied on this path by Fabrizio Ponzo, Large Videowall & Control Room, Territory Manager of Barco, and by Maurizio Vacca, Sales Director of 3G Electronics, who has been working in the sector for thirty years. Maurizio Vacca: "The Control Room sector is conservative by nature, in many cases it simply cannot be afforded that things do not work or the services are not reliable, which is why clients are very cautious in innovation and often prefer, at least now, a hybrid approach, i.e. the use of IP and analogue at the same time. So it happens to have an existing room wired with analogue cables, the signals coming from digital cameras on the network, and various management software .” From the market point of view, the two major trends for Control Rooms are therefore the subdivision of the rooms, which become smaller and more distributed, and the so-called servitization, that is, the conversion from the concept of product to that of service.
The subdivision of Control Rooms ...
The Control Rooms of a few years ago were large and complex environments, where there was a tendency to centralise the monitoring of signal flows. In recent years, thanks
to the greater efficiency of data transport technologies, the Cloud and the progressive conversion of hardware-based services to software-based ones, it has been possible to easily distribute and relocate the rooms even in places where there are physical processes. In a nutshell, today it is easier to think of having a Control Room separate from the offices and perhaps in outsourcing, far from the station being monitored, or even simply many stations distributed but connected to each other. Perhaps in coordination with other colleagues who are taking care of another portion of the work, and under the supervision of their boss, who may have their office on another floor or in another location. "If until a few years ago - Fabrizio Ponzo tells us - the control room was the prerogative of large public / private companies or the joint forces sector for the control of sensitive infrastructures, we now see a capillary increase in command-and-control points in many, many business realities. "
… And servitization
Servitization indicates a business model that focuses on the transformation from the sale of a product to the sale of a service. The main aspect is related to the transition from an economy that involves possession (i.e. purchase, possession, maintenance of the asset, etc ...) to the exploitation of the service that would result from possession. The topic is valid both in cases of the outsourcing of the service provided by the Control Room (the control of a production site by an external supplier, for example) and of the decentralisation of the Control Room itself. Furthermore, the concept is strongly connected to the progressive trend towards adoption of software systems, therefore also with the progress of technology and digitisation and, in particular precisely in the case of the Control Rooms, with the introduction of the service alongside the customer as an integral part of the sale, necessary considering the complexity of today's rooms. A service that in this field can provide 24h assistance in the riskiest situations, or on the next working day in less critical cases, with spare parts, remote or on-site assistance, etc. Suppliers can thus create a control room where they can monitor the installations made for their customers all over the world: this allows new business models and revenues, among which servitization is at the forefront. There are many factors that make this transformation advantageous: greater proximity and customer loyalty, more ability to predict and manage maintenance and support needs, the creation of advanced services; all providing the end user with tools to improve productivity, efficiency, and sustainability. Servitization represents an opportunity for suppliers, and the Control room is an essential tool to enable it. An advanced Control room, which monitors and manages the technological services provided to client companies, means many things together: remote connection, augmented reality, digital twin, predictive and remote maintenance. From the same Control room, machines installed in multiple sites of different client companies are displayed, with the possibility of monitoring the fleet of different factories, plants, and companies.
AV / IT, System Integrator and IT Manager
If the hybridisation between the AV and IT world is increasingly close, this is even more true for the world of Control Rooms, where the computer network is under particular pressure due to the large amount of continuous and often critical data. In job orders, the System Integrator's interlocutor is very often the IT Manager, as Maurizio Vacca points out: "in relation to the criticality of the data conveyed, and not to delve into areas such as AV that IT Managers do not always master, often the latter tend to make conservative and very prudent choices. We know that AV is much more likely to go towards IT than the other way around and, in these cases, we try to find proposals that reflect this approach: total security, consolidated tools and solutions but already IP ready.. " "One of the issues that attracted the most attention in this last period - adds Fabrizio Ponzo - is certainly the issue of Cyber Security: all companies with sensitive infrastructures have equipped themselves or are equipping themselves with NOC and SOC control rooms, to deal with issues of this type. Recent geo-political changes have highlighted the importance of the cyber domain and how important it is to implement all-round corporate prevention and protection. The spread of smart & remote working has also brought out potential risks related to cyber security: the more objects are connected, the more information is transformed into "big data" to be analysed and controlled, and in this case artificial intelligence comes to the rescue, applied very well for example to video analysis."
The new applications
With Maurizio Vacca and Fabrizio Ponzo we explored the most interesting strands of new applications for Control Rooms. Among them, the financial sector, especially what is called Revenue Management, is faced in
an increasingly scientific and data-based manner, which must therefore be grouped, read, and interpreted. Compared to applications related to transport and security, there is a tendency to distribute the viewing points a lot, because the important thing is not to have a complete glance on the whole situation, but rather the ability to view and share data with other operators and other offices or meeting rooms. So instead of the room with large viewing surfaces, we will have small rooms or even single viewing points connected to each other. Connected to this, we observe the tendence to create increasingly elaborate Dashboards to view and interpret data of all kinds: sales, results, market, etc. "The decentralisation of the signal - explains Maurizio Vacca - has led to the need to manage a flow of data displayed on individual displays, where a "summary" of them is evaluated, with many additional viewing points. So, there is a tendency to have software, players and distribution devices separated from the Control Room. " And it is precisely the Dashboard concept that creates a bridge with two other important areas of data visualisation and management via AV equipment: first of all the world of Meeting Rooms, small and large, both for the management of the room itself, but above all for the hybridisation of the two environments - Meeting Room and Control Room - and their respective services and needs. "The need is growing strongly - explains Fabrizio Ponzo -: if before we spoke almost exclusively of the control room and the crisis room, declined in many ways, the birth of new multi-purpose control environments imposes the need to transfer data and related analysis towards decision-making environments such as Meeting and Board Room where we find the fusion with AV-over-IP transport technologies, presentation and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) solutions. Integrations are quite common for us thanks to the wide range of products and solutions we have in our portfolio and the wide interoperability between the components.” Indeed, once you have updated your meeting room to adequately support the needs of hybrid or asynchronous work, with BYOD and BYOM solutions, why not make the data to be analysed also viewable, having the service and software suitable for interpreting them, without having to move somewhere else? From here the step towards Digital Signage is just as short: "What is Digital Signage? It is the ability to view content on a variety of screens and workstations, among these there are also websites, Dashboards and http links… that is, in this case too, data. And if these data are to be displayed in several workstations, and / or in a common work room, we are back to the concept of Control Room”. Perhaps it is more difficult to imagine a mix between DS and Control Room when we talk about promotional messaging in a supermarket, but when we start thinking about the profiling of the users of these same messages through sensors and cameras, but also the use of digital messaging for the management of the halls of a congress centre that also involves the collection of data regarding the use of the halls (the times in which they are most used, the average presence, etc.), here too we can think of an interesting hybridisation. We would like to continue talking about what seems to us the least defined but also the most promising trend: the mix between Control Room and IoT; the world of connected objects, which is also rapidly evolving in all business sectors, brings with it a huge amount of big data to be analysed. From energy consumption to checks on stocks of materials and goods, up to production realities: "Industry 4.0 has provided a strong input, - explains Fabrizio Ponzo - favouring integration with software and systems dedicated to machine learning, artificial intelligence, hyper automation and cybersecurity, allowing not only to analytically measure the performance of the plants, but also to monitor their status remotely and to be able to approach issues related to predictive maintenance.” In fact, if the data itself is not aggregated and contextualised, it is difficult to interpret, so it becomes essential to exploit AI technologies to automate all phases of data analysis and aggregation, while maintaining a human-centric approach in favour of correct display ergonomics. exploiting the new skills available to the operators of the new generations of Control Rooms. The prediction of events is the next frontier: the data collected from the different sources, suitably compared, will be able to offer a picture of trends and probabilities. "The interconnection of tools and machinery in the civil and industrial world - Fabrizio Ponzo points out - allows us to enable and manage predictive analyses, activities that allow, if well implemented, to identify trends and the possible occurrence of anomalies, avoiding risks of downtime and optimize maintenance activities on critical assets ". The logic of the Control Room is now expanding to many 'unsuspected' sectors, we close with an idea that highlights it: "We have made several strange applications - concludes Maurizio Vacca - but the most unique is the one monitoring snacks of vending machines in airports. The control system signals and displays when the products are out of stock, on what date and where, so that the operator can supply the distributors without fail ... so useful that it is a profitable model for those who have implemented it ".
The operator at the centre
Before closing, a thought goes to the operator, and to the importance of putting them in a position to do their job in the best possible way. The exponential increase in the data to be interpreted, and the possibilities offered by new technologies that make the amount of surveys increasingly higher, make the data input in a Control Room become relevant. A massive amount of big data to manage, interpret and archive. Obviously, expecting an operator to be able
to monitor a display for each source, ending up with maybe twenty in front of them, is not the way to efficiency: starting from the basics, the room should be quiet and the station confortable and ergonomically the station is comfortable and ergonomically correct. Coming to the technological part, the order of the workstation, the absence of peripherals and exposed connection cables, the centralisation of operations via a single keyboard / muse / pad via a virtualized workstation, should fall within the basic elements. The use of dashboards and software for reading, filtering and interpreting data is the last piece of the fundamental aspects. However, a new ingredient is added, coming from the growing habit, and equally growing expectation on the part of the workers of the new generations, to be able to work in hybrid mode: in this case there is also the urgency to connect the decentralised workstation (domestic or an external study), where possible, to the main one and receive the flow of information with an adequate level of security in terms of protection of both data and the network itself.
Ringraziamenti
Per gli spunti offerti, fondamentali per la redazione di questo articolo, vogliamo ringraziare:
Fabrizio Ponzo Large Videowall&Control Room Barco, Territory Manager Nel settore da ormai 15 anni, si è occupato sempre di Control Room e schermi di grande formato, con ruoli sia tecnici (Technical Supprto, CTO ecc.) che di sviluppo del business, sia per vendor (Planar, Eyevis) che per System Interator (VideoGecom). Dal gennaio del 2022 è in Barco con il compito di sviluppare il mercato delle Control Room e delle soluzioni di visualizzazione di grande formato per il mercato Corporate, supportando i clienti finali ed i partner nell’identificazione delle giuste soluzioni e lavorando per la trasformazione digitale dei luoghi di lavoro. Il suo motto, ripreso da Annibale, è: “O troveremo una strada o ne costruiremo una”. www.barco.com
Maurizio Vacca Direzione Vendite, 3G Electronics Dopo un inizio di carriera con ruoli legati alle vendite in aziende del mondo visual, passa prima in Epson come Product Manager per poi trovare definitiva collocazione in 3G Electronics, fondata nel 1969 e attiva nel settore dell’elettronica e dell’informatica. L’azienda virerà successivamente verso il Digital Signage, le Control Room e, in generale, i sistemi hardware e software per la Comunicazione Visiva, sviluppando anche soluzioni proprie e servizi di assistenza specifici per i mercati verticali. Oggi Socio di 3G Electronics, ricopre il ruolo di Direttore Vendite, con una forte vocazione all’assistenza tecnica pre e post sales. www.3gelectronics.it
Thank yous
For the ideas offered, fundamental for the preparation of this article, we want to thank:
Fabrizio Ponzo Large Videowall & Control Room Barco, Territory Manager In the sector for the past 15 years, he has always dealt with Control Rooms and large format screens, with both technical (Technical Support, CTO, etc.) and business development roles, both for vendor (Planar, Eyevis) and for System Integrator (VideoGecom). Since January 2022 he has been in Barco with the task of developing the Control Room market and large format display solutions for the Corporate market, supporting end customers and partners in identifying the right solutions and working for the digital transformation of workplaces. His motto, taken up by Hannibal, is: “Either we will find a road or we will build one”. www.barco.com
Maurizio Vacca Sales Director, 3G Electronics After a career beginning with sales-related roles in companies in the visual world, he first moved to Epson as Product Manager and then found a definitive position in 3G Electronics, founded in 1969 and active in the electronics and information technology sector. The company will subsequently move towards Digital Signage, Control Rooms and, in general, hardware and software systems for Visual Communication, also developing its own solutions and specific assistance services for vertical markets. Today a Partner of 3G Electronics, he holds the role of Sales Director, with a strong vocation for pre and post sales technical assistance. www.3gelectronics.it
