Not Your Dad’s Office Environment
John Hickey, senior director, R&D and KVM systems for Black Box, says that system management was also a priority for his company in developing products for the modern workfoce.
Hickey says Black Box understands the heavy workload that IT professionals deal with, and because of this Black Box designs its systems to enable AV and IT managers to easily maintain multiple work sites.
“KVM over IP allows systems to be spread over IP networks to deploy and manage systems within a building, across buildings or across countries,” Hickey notes. “In particular, the minimal bandwidth requirements of InvisaPC work well across WANs, revealing new deployment models for AV and IT managers.”
He adds that the device along with its Agility products allows KVM over IP systems to be set up for specific applications. Establishing a quality user experience, he emphasizes, is paramount for applications such as broadcast, medical and emergency response usages.
“Agility is optimized for dedicated networks and InvisaPC is optimized for enterprise LANs and WLANs,” he says. “Together they power a wide range of possible applications such as controlling a radio station from another city or remotely configuring a video wall for a disaster recovery control room.”
Beyond the setup, scalability and management advantages of KVM over IP, solutions such as the Black Box line of products also support the use of USB peripherals. This allows users to access their headsets, scanners, touchpanels, printers and other USB-based devices without the fear of limiting their resources.
Just Another Item in Dealers’ Tool Boxes
Putting KVM in perspective, Liao says that it is important to remember that while such technology is trending, integrators should not completely abandon traditional KVM systems.
“IP KVM won’t replace the standard KVM. In other words, the market share of IP KVM is not going to impact the market share of standard KVM,” he asserts. “In terms of remote/local application, and other standard KVM applications, IP KVM and standard KVM both have their own markets.”
Conway says that dealers will have to weigh several factors, including price, performance expectations and long-term client goals in providing their customers system solutions.
“With KVM over IP, all the [broadcast] studios can be in the same building. In the past, all the hardwired devices would have to be rerouted if the system went down with traditional KVM. With KVM over IP it’s as simple as saying this receiver needs to be connected to this IP address and not that one. It gives managers freedom.” —Tim Conway, Adder Technology
“The broadcast market is a good fit, they are all about getting systems back into centralized rooms. What [KVM over IP] brings them is flexibility,” he says.
“Where traditional KVM extenders do that, but every connection is hardwired. With KVM over IP, all the studios can be in the same building. In the past, all the hardwired devices would have to be rerouted if the system went down with traditional KVM. With KVM over IP it’s as simple as saying this receiver needs to be connected to this IP address and not that one. It gives managers freedom.”
Other markets such as industrial control, medical and control centers, Conway says, all require similar levels of flexibility and reliability. Reiterating Liao’s point, Conway says there is still a significant amount of business left for traditional KVM applications, however.
“In the immediate future there is a need for traditional KVM for those that don’t want to step into an IP system. If you have a handful of computers, there isn’t a compelling reason,” Conway says. “If it’s a localized system, then traditional KVM works well.”
“The cost of IP is something that you have to factor in with the network switches and other devices,” he continues. “Unless you see a need down the road it’s not the right kind of tool; it’s kind of like driving a roofing nail with a sledge hammer. But, we don’t see IP going away.”
Hickey adds that as the market grows and diversifies with applications for both traditional and IP-based solutions, ultimately the demand for KVM over IP will only increase due to the continuing improvement of networks.
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“The growth of KVM over IP has been strong over the last few years and we expect that to continue. Use cases and technology will continue to evolve and support for virtualization and other types of video will be important, but the core demand will remain ‘over IP,'” Hickey says.
“Cost-effective networking is important to this segment’s growth, but this seems assured as KVM over IP is built on Ethernet and IP, which are high volume and cost effective. This is important as 4K and 8K becomes more prevalent with higher bandwidths that are needed to transport them,” he adds. “The opportunities for growth with high-performance KVM over IP are widespread.”
