The Borderless

Control Room
The Future of Display Solutions in
Collaborative Operation Centers
 White Paper Borderless Control Room

Table of Contents
3 Introduction
4 The Case for a Borderless Control Room
5 True Situational Awareness
6 Solutions for the Borderless Control Room
7 Technology Differentiation
8 Conclusion and Next Steps

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 White Paper Borderless Control Room

Introduction
The workplace has changed dramatically over the past few
years. Globalization has interconnected both companies and
offices around the world and digital transformation initiatives
have made it easier than ever to work closely with people
remotely. As a result, the sharing of information and data for
decision making has never been easier and it has never been
more important, as businesses work hard to eliminate silos
within offices and across globally distributed teams.

While companies have been moving away from centralized

offices and siloed teams for years, the COVID 19 pandemic
accelerated the need for distributed operations in every
orporation. The sheer number of people working from
home changed the definition of “the office” and Gartner
cited “Anywhere Operations” as one of the key trends for
2021. More than ever before, companies need to be able to
communicate and collaborate beyond the four walls of the
office--and beyond the four walls of a mission critical
operations center.

In today’s world, all business operations have become borderless and the infrastructure for mission critical decision making
should be no different. In the age of digital transformation, organizations deploying operation center and control room
infrastructure need to ensure they deploy a system that can connect beyond the four walls of the operation center and
delivers situational awareness to the stakeholders who need it, wherever they are.

A Borderless Control Room or Operation Center is a mission critical solution that

removes borders by enabling remote situational awareness without geographical
or physical constraints.

Introduction
1. Explore the importance of the borderless control room in today’s world
2. Examine the implications for true situational awareness
3. Survey technology options for those looking to remove the borders from their control rooms
4. Lay out next steps for those ready to make a change to a borderless control room for global and distributed operations.

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 White Paper Borderless Control Room

The Case for a Borderless Control Room

To give concrete illustration to the business imperative driving the movement towards borderless control rooms, here are some
recent examples we’ve seen of customers seeking a solution that connects beyond the four walls of their operation centers
and why that’s important for their business needs:

• A European manufacturer needed a solution that would allow them to oversee the remote operation centers at their plant
locations from inside their HQ operation center. This was to ensure better process oversight and quality control as well as
to ensure they could deliver better support in case of local emergencies.

• A software company sought to connect all their operation centers and to ensure even local HDMI sources could be shared
across multiple operation centers for business process optimization.

• Two airports covered by a single airport authority needed full operation center redundancy between the two locations.

• A national border guard in a Middle Eastern country needed the video wall in their HQ to oversee the video walls at each
border post, and the content on all those video walls.

• A US based real estate holding company wanted to have video streams in their SOC easily pushed out to the smartphones
of their security guards.

Professionals involved in mission critical infrastructure

often talk about situational awareness as a cornerstone
for decision making. This of course begs the question of
what situational awareness actually is and beyond that
who should have this situational awareness? How do
you deliver situational awareness to stakeholders outside
the walls of the control room?

The last example above of the US based real estate

company that wants its security guards to receive video
footage from their SOC makes it clear that it’s not just
the operators inside the SOC that need situational
awareness. Those who need the information, video or
data from a control room might not be in the control
room in fact, they might not even be onsite.

True Situational Awareness

True situational awareness only exists if it enhances the way key people make critical
decisions in real time.

With this definition in mind, delivering true situational awareness certainly means an operation center or control room needs to
operate beyond its own four walls. It needs to be borderless.

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 White Paper Borderless Control Room

Consider some of the many scenarios in which key people involved in mission critical decisions might not be within the four
walls of the operations center:

• Key personnel may be working from home

• First responders may be in the field
• If upper management needs to be kept informed, they may be located in a different part of the country, or even in a
different country
• Another agency providing oversight may be located in another office.
• Due to an emergency onsite, it may be a team in a second redundant location that is helping make decisions
• Due to an emergency operators may need to work from home or from a different location

In today’s interconnected world, scenarios such as these are more common than they ever have been before. In each, an
operation center video wall or display solution that is only visible to local operators is not sufficient.

Another way to consider this is to consider the real world consequences faced when the right people don’t have the data and
information needed to make the right decisions at the right time.

Let’s look at two situations that highlight the difference

between proactive information vs reactive information.
After the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, it took several
days to apprehend the suspect. Multiple government
agencies were involved in the manhunt and the city of
Boston had to endure a 3 day lock down at a cost of roughly
$333 million a day in lost revenue. Most importantly, there
was additional loss of life after the bombing.

This was in part a result of agencies relying on reactive

methods as opposed to proactive. Various video feeds were
reviewed across a wide spectrum of different sources, but
this took time and was more reactive than proactive. If the
city had the proper solutions in place within their command
and control centers they would have had access to those
same camera feeds in real time. Perimeters could have
been set within minutes and the suspect might have been
apprehended without having left the immediate area.

In contrast, consider a situation where proactive information led to a better outcome. A global financial organization
established a global security operations center to monitor critical assets. In addition they had a layer of analytics monitoring
social media for keywords.

The combination of these technologies allowed them to flag a twitter feed that identified an explosion one mile away from
one of their branches in South America. Due to the proactive information they uncovered, they were able to initiate their
emergency response plan and evacuate their local branch before local authorities were even informed.

In both of these situations, communication and information flow from outside the four walls of the control room played an
important role. This leads to the question: what can organizations do today to implement a truly borderless control room.

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 White Paper Borderless Control Room

Solutions for the Borderless Control Room

In the past AV solutions for mission critical display solutions have tended to be hardware focused using either proprietary or
specialized hardware. This is not an approach that will work for a borderless control room. Visual display solutions that allow
collaboration beyond the four walls, needs to be software based and should be built with an open technology approach:
ensuring flexibility for customers, with maximum integration options via an API. Any viable solution will also need to be network
and cloud connected to ensure it can operate securely and seamlessly across multiple locations.

These criteria perfectly describe Userful’s Visual Networking Platform, a software solution that allows operators to stream any
content source onto any screen globally in real time. Userful operates on standards based hardware, connects from an on-
premise (or cloud based) server to screens, video walls and LED walls over the network and allows operators to control and
interact with sources either locally or through the cloud.

It’s important that any solution for operation centers meets the needs of the operators within the four walls of the operations
center. Userful is certainly a feature leader in this regard. Userful offers:

• The ability to display any source anywhere on any display

for situational awareness
• Real time interactivity (software KVM) from a desktop
• Drag, drop and resizing of windows in WISIWIG interface
• Role based access control (RBAC) with SAML, LDAP
integration
• API integration with VMS’s for Computer vision, AI, IoT
triggers
• Supervisor dashboard for remote monitoring of the
content on multiple video walls
• Full redundancy with failover server
• Enterprise security

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 White Paper Borderless Control Room

Userful is uniquely suited to ensuring all stake holders and decision makers, wherever they
are located, have the visual information and data needed in real time.

Userful’s anywhere operations approach offers customers

remote access to an operation center video wall from any
desktop. Operators working from home or elsewhere can
securely access the same visual sources laid out exactly
as they are on the video wall inside the operation center.
They can interact with those sources, create and save
layouts which are also visible to those inside the four walls
of the operation center.Userful can also be set up to share
sources, across locations allowing operators with a video
wall in one location to access sources from a Userful server
set up in another location. Userful can also be set up to
share sources, across locations allowing operators with a
video wall in one location to access sources from a Userful
server set up in another location.

Technology Differentiation
It’s worth considering briefly how Userful’s Visual Networking Platform compares to other solutions deployed to support video
walls and LED walls in operation centers and control rooms.

Userful’s fundamental advantage in the marketplace today is that it was built using IT standards and built for IT teams with a
network architecture that will be familiar to any IT administrator. Many AV solutions are centered instead around specialized or
proprietary hardware that limits the solution’s capabilities to operate outside the four walls of the control room.

Another key differentiation is that Userful is not just a

solution for operation centers and control rooms but a
platform allowing customers to stream any content source
onto any screen globally in real time with applications in a
broad variety of AV related use cases. This frees IT teams
from juggling multiple point solutions to deal with specific
applications. Userful can be deployed for data dashboards,
corporate signage, customer communication, meeting rooms
and board rooms as well as operation center and control
room video walls.

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 White Paper Borderless Control Room

Conclusion and Next Steps

While many organizations have been communicating and collaborating outside the four walls of the office for years, the nature
of mission critical decision making has often resulted in it being centralized. The unfortunate result is that critical data and
information is sometimes locked within the four walls of the control room instead of being shared with the right people at the
right time for true situational awareness.

As we have seen, there can be tangible business, and even life and death, consequences to not ensuring operation centers
and control rooms are borderless in their operation. Deploying the right tools and technology is a key first step in ensuring
mission critical operators are able to be proactive and not reactive. Userful’s Visual Networking Platform ensures that
organizations can leverage the network and cloud in a secure, scalable way to ensure every individual or team, who needs
data and visual information, has it regardless of where they are located.

Consult with a Userful Expert

Consult with one of our subject matter experts to

understand how we can simplify your AV infrastructure.

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