Maybe it’s the limited access due to lack of security clearance.

Maybe it’s the top secret nature of many of the projects.

But no commercial integration market is less transparent than command and control rooms. The mysterious fog is going to have to lift because the market is opening up.

No longer are these projects exclusive to enormous government clients with the deepest pockets and the largest integrators. Technology has created control room demand among smaller public and private clients and opened the door for small- and medium-sized integrators.

In order to truly unlock the command and control room market, it has to become more transparent. So we used the recent CI webinar “How to Profit in the Growing Control Room Integration Market” to ask as many questions as possible to our expert panel.

Fielding questions are Tyler Bonner, director of the Critical Space Solutions group at Georgia-based integrator Technical Innovation; Paul Streffon, senior staff instructor for InfoComm and Arndt Schrader, marketing manager for RGB Spectrum.

Answers are paraphrased, but access the entire presentation here.

How big is the command and control room integration market?

Schrader: I estimate it to be between $750 million and $1.25 billion worldwide. But how do you define the control room integration market?

I’m really talking about anything from a single wall for a military application, for instance, to a 50- to 100-operator facility for a power utility.

There are different ways to arrive at this data and the most obvious one is really labor intensive; that would be to use public records, ask integrators, for example, as well as equipment manufacturers. There are some larger companies that publish records, some magazines and talking to people helps. So you just have to do the math and include a couple of assumptions and you probably will arrive at these estimates.

We also talk to integrators all over the world, particularly in Asian and Europe, and they typically know the market very well. They know their volume for example in Germany, Poland and Russian. So we use those numbers to check our records.

And the third, more cumbersome, approach would be to look at the individual projects. The problem there is that not all projects are known and published.

Describe the video solutions being installed in command and control rooms.

Streffon: There’s a great deal of different equipment in different rooms and different clients have different needs. The key is to ask clients up front about that, how they want to use the room and determine their needs.

There’s some digital signage. Operation stations have computer screens. We might think that’s the IT department’s job, but we need to tie those screens into the larger screens and have the ability to switch and put different items onto the large screens so the whole room can see one or many images.

So we’re talking front-projection, rear-screen projection, monitors, switchers, scalers - a whole variety of things. And don’t forget about the mounts and elements that need to hold it up. Occasionally there might be video conferencing in a facility or things as simple as television tuners.

So a good deal of traditional video stuff but tied together in some very sophisticated ways.

Beyond video, describe the other technology being installed in command and control rooms.

Bonner: We’re finding elements of traditional A/V like video conferencing becoming more integrated into these spaces. Probably one of the more important pieces in control rooms, which is a small piece from a revenue standpoint but a key piece to situational awareness, is the audio component.

However, audio can also be one of the largest sources of complaints in a space like this. Many designers don’t think enough about configuring the space so the systems can be intelligible. Also, more audible devices are finding their way into control rooms—radios, handset phones, cellular phones—and it can become an audible mess if it’s not managed properly.

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About the author

Tom LeBlanc - Editor-in-Chief, CI, Tom

Tom has been covering electronics integration since 2003. Prior to being named editor-in-chief of CI, he was senior writer and managing editor of CE Pro. Before that, he wrote for the sports department of the Boston Herald. Migrating to magazines, he was a staff editor for a golf publication and an outdoor sports publication. Follow him on Twitter @leblanctom.

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