The current era shows the long road that control rooms have gone through, which are immersed in various business verticals.
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The new conceptualization in advances in data processing, improvements in operational capacity, greater degree of reliability and optimization of results, has been achieved thanks to the understanding of transformation in visualization systems.
That is, as in any tool within the technology sector, it has been consolidated thanks to a series of changes. Therefore, to understand why intelligence centers are established as the main engine of development in 2021, first, it would be necessary to make a contextual tour of the history of control rooms and the benefits that have been developed through their conception as a tool for the improvement in the optimization of monitoring processes.
Over the years the industry has been perfected, for Barco this process began in 1994, when its first technologies for control rooms entered the market, however, history goes back many years. With the development of the Second Industrial Revolution, the pattern for new advances is created throughout the world, control rooms begin to appear in the early 1920s; before their arrival, the whole team supervised and controlled the machines at the same time, but through mass production, they saw the need to look for alternatives that would automate processes more efficiently, hence the idea of centrally supervising the assembly line, this growth was carried out gradually, therefore, it is imprecise to mention the exact moment in which the first control room emerges.
Through the experience that was brewing over the years, the role of the control rooms in the Second World War, was essential to plan strategies, lines of action and monitoring of enemy forces, as well as their own. The use of the command and control centers consisted of a large central map that usually helped to have a better field view, where operators communicated the latest information of the incoming field, and thanks to this it could be activated more quickly. At this stage, also the central command rooms in submarines, functioned as control rooms, in which, remotely, it was possible to collect information and act according to the strategies.
The ideological and informative representation that occurred in the wake of the Cold War, allowed that, during the 1960s, the use of control rooms was made public, which were kept as secret places, due to the information they dealt with in their role during historical events. It is at this point, where the war fought space race between the United States and the Soviet Union, puts in the public eye, the capacity of the control centers, which show the complexity and technical superiority of these spaces, even becoming places of attention to dramatize these environments and turn them into cinematographic control rooms that they showed through fiction films, futuristic and visually stunning depictions of the work within the control rooms.
These advances around the world led in Latin America in 1970 in what was the real revolution in the control rooms, through the Cybersyn project. With the aspirations of Salvador Allende, who was socialist president of Chile, who wanted to launch a project that would allow controlled economic planning in real time, where parameters such as the supply of raw materials and the high rates of absenteeism of workers would be constantly monitored, and would alert if those values were outside the predefined ranges.
This plan was far ahead of its time, since networked computers did not yet exist, however, the idea was to collect all the information of state enterprises and feed them into a central computer that would analyze the data and alert when anomalies occurred. However, it could never be carried out due to the coup d'état forged in 1973 by Augusto Pinochet, who destroyed the control center of the project.
Based on this route, the current era shows the long road that the control rooms have gone through, which are immersed in various business verticals. You can also observe how each space must be adapted to the unique needs of the user. In a strict sense, the experience that Barco has developed over almost 30 years provides greater confidence not only in high-tech equipment, but with greater skill in designing and implementing complex infrastructures.
"The commitment to provide greater vision and reliability to the user, where the provision of technologies with 24/7 function is required and solidify a global network of partners has not been an easy task, however, the experience of the years, allows us to face the new challenges that come with evolution, with the right tools to support any series of operations," said Manuel Navarrete, Sales Manager Barco in Colombia.
Today has placed us in a scenario that requires greater control, focused on health issues, where data has become a key asset within the new social order, in which the need for data management for decision making arises. Within control rooms, there are specificities that must be met through hardware systems such as advanced software. To meet these needs, Barco has within its portfolio of solutions fundamental elements such as the innovative workspace solution for the operator OpSpace, our distributed content management platform TansForm N, and our large 24/7 videowall facilities, leaders in the industry that initially led us to the control room business.
The immediate future within the operational requirements of the client focuses on the three main videowall technologies offered by Barco, in reference to LCD, direct vision LEDs and rear-projection cubes (RPC). When you have technologies with significant differences between them, the field of vision of customers is wider, therefore, the needs that are currently presented can be met effectively, in addition to the 10-year warranty offered to the user, you have the certainty of a constant update that can be adapted to the needs of today and the future.
In conclusion, the diversification of operations in the processing of information through control rooms is not a new resource, however, with the experience that has been developed over the years in all the environments presented, it accounts for how these spaces within the industry offer greater understanding and responsiveness among analysts, cataloging it as a key point in long-term visualization, since its benefits show the capacity of this technology from its conception, with greater tools today and advances that it represents in coming years in data monitoring.
