From UC&C to Federation: How Barco CTRL connects control rooms at every scale

Control room technology is moving fast, and if you want to see where it's heading, InfoComm (June 17–19, Las Vegas) is the place to be. Barco will be showcasing some of the most exciting new capabilities of Barco CTRL – including a live demonstration of the Federation feature in the Barco Hospitality Suite, available by appointment. But whether or not you'll be in Las Vegas, here's the importance of the Federation feature and how it differs from other types of external collaboration within Barco CTRL.

Control rooms have always been about getting the right information to the right people at the right time. But the definition of "the right people" keeps expanding. Colleagues working from home, experts stationed on a remote drilling platform, operators spread across a dozen sites of the same utility network: they all need access to critical operational data, and they all need it securely.

Barco CTRL, the KVM over IT solution for control rooms, has been built from the ground up to answer that challenge. Three features sit at the heart of its connectivity story: Unified Communication & Collaboration (UC&C), the Connected Control Room, and Federation. They are related, but they serve different purposes and operate at different scales. Here is how they differ, and why the distinction matters.

Most control room operators are familiar with Microsoft Teams or Zoom. In the past, running these tools from a control room meant accessing them through an encoded PC – functional, but clunky. The UC&C integration in Barco CTRL changes that by embedding these tools directly into the platform.

The first stage, available now, delivers core UC&C functionality natively within Barco CTRL. Later this year, full functionality will follow, and that is where things get genuinely powerful. Operators will be able to share control room content – think SCADA data, live security footage, or network monitoring dashboards – directly with colleagues in a Teams or Zoom call, if permissions allow. That kind of sharing is simply not possible when the collaboration tool runs on an encoded PC, because the content and the tool live in separate environments. UC&C in Barco CTRL bridges that gap.

The Connected Control Room addresses a different challenge: what happens when your Barco CTRL system needs to reach beyond the walls of the control room itself?

A Barco CTRL installation runs on one server (typically accompanied by a redundant server that automatically takes over when that server should ever fail). That server manages everything: the video wall, the operator desks, the sources. Connecting nearby rooms is straightforward: a physical cable does the job. But for genuinely remote locations, you need something more. Operators on an offshore drilling platform. A subsidiary branch a few hundred kilometers away.

This is where the partnership between Barco and Extreme Networks becomes relevant. Through Extreme Fabric technology – including SD-WAN and Secure Fabric switching and satellite communication – these distant endpoints can be securely connected to the main Barco CTRL system. The operator experience remains identical regardless of where someone is sitting. Distance stops being an obstacle without ever compromising security.

Federation takes the concept one level further. Where the Connected Control Room extends a single Barco CTRL system outward, Federation links multiple independent Barco CTRL systems, each with its own servers, into one coherent operational network.

Think of two large utility control rooms in different cities, or several police zones that need to share situational awareness during a major incident. Each location has its own fully autonomous Barco CTRL installation. Federation allows them to share sources and collaborate as if they were one system, while each site retains full control over its own resources and security boundaries. There is no single point of failure, and no compromise on the independence of each location. All information flowing between sites is fully encrypted, ensuring security at any time.

UC&C, the Connected Control Room, and Federation are not competing features. They operate at different layers of the same challenge: connecting people to critical information, whether that means a colleague on a video call, a remote worker on the other side of the country, or a site on the other side of the continent.

Together, they reflect the core promise of Barco CTRL: a platform that grows with your needs, without ever asking you to compromise on security or simplicity.

Want to see Federation in action? Visit the Barco Hospitality Suite at InfoComm in Las Vegas (June 17–19), available by appointment. Reach out to your Barco contact to book your slot. Or you can see Barco CTRL in action on other booths around the show floor. Download the InfoComm floorplan to see where to find us!