Beyond the control room: Where KVM is quietly taking over

It might be argued that KVM has been the very definition of a slow-burn technology. It’s actually been the best part of 30 years since KVM – aka Keyboard, Video and Mouse – first began to make its mark in pro AV as a method of allowing a user to control multiple computers, workstations and servers from a single set of peripherals. Its functionality and low-latency made it a particularly popular choice for mission-critical real-time environments, such as utility and emergency service control rooms.

However, with IP-based KVM booming in recent years and the ever-growing convergence between AV and IT, the technology is experiencing something of a second lease of life. It is becoming increasingly commonplace in enterprise IT installations, hybrid workplaces, and remote production broadcast workflows, among other professional environments.

In this feature we’ll chart the evolution of KVM and its advancement beyond the control room with input from a number of leading vendors, including Adder Technology. Senior product manager John Halksworth believes that whilst control rooms remain a core market for KVM systems, adoption is growing rapidly across new areas of the media and entertainment sector. “In particular, virtual production and remote production workflows have generated a strong demand for solutions that enable centralised resources, remote access and low-latency IP KVM with high colour accuracy and real-time collaboration,” he says.

And David Isola, director, global product marketing at Black Box technical product solutions, adds: “Beyond traditional command and control centres, we have had many inquiries from transportation/ATC/rail/traffic management centres/PSAP [public safety answering points]. IP KVM allows control, 24/7 access, security and redundancy.”

Specific applications that are poised for growth include patient and scientific monitoring in healthcare facilities and clinical laboratories, remote management of critical machinery, and distance management for retail estate technology such as interactive kiosks and digital signage.

There is a consensus view that convergence of AV and IT systems has been a hugely important driver of fresh demand for IP KVM. Halksworth explains: “This evolution is driven by the need to distribute video and audio flexibly across multiple locations while maintaining low latency and high reliability. As a result, demand for IP KVM has grown a lot. Organisations are moving away from fixed point-to-point architectures in favour of scalable, adaptable systems that integrate effortlessly with existing IT networks. Consequently, IP KVM is increasingly regarded as a core infrastructure rather than an AV add-on.”

Catherine Koutsaris, product marketing manager at Matrox Video, opines that IP KVM aligns naturally with converged environments by using standard network protocols, switches, and security frameworks familiar to IT teams, while still meeting the performance, latency and video quality requirements expected by AV professionals.  She adds: “This convergence enables centralised computing, flexible operator locations, and more scalable system designs. Instead of fixed, point-to-point connections, organisations can dynamically route video, USB, and control signals over the network, adapting quickly to operational changes.”

DUAL PURPOSE
For KVM vendors, this has led to a fresh duality of purpose – designing solutions that both offer broadcast-quality performance and can be integrated into IT-oriented networks. This has also demanded a new wave of standards projects to ensure interoperability, as well as increased awareness of security issues facing enterprise networks.

But despite the challenges, the benefits of IP KVM are multifold. Guntermann & Drunck’s EVP sales EMEA, Jochen Bauer, says: “Network-based KVM enables scalable access to distributed systems, supports remote operation, and integrates naturally with IT management and security concepts. As a result, KVM is becoming a fundamental part of the control room infrastructure, with a strong focus on low latency, high reliability and resilient system design.”

Of course, it’s not as if this is all settled permanently. In particular, the ongoing push towards higher-resolution video brings its own issues. As in broadcast, an increasing number of control rooms and other AV environments are adopting 4K60 resolution – although 8K, at least for now, looks to be a fairly niche concern – and hence also moving towards 10G network architectures.

Mark Hempel, head of product management at IHSE, says that while this supports higher performance, it also increases cost and complexity unless highly efficient, low-latency video codecs are employed. “Ultra-low latency, pixel-perfect desktop imaging, and high system resilience are essential, positioning KVM as the preferred technology for mission-critical environments compared to conventional pro AV solutions,” he adds.

It is also important to note that there are now three main categories of KVM, as outlined by Hempel: Desktop KVM, which is growing primarily in highly secure environments; Server Management KVM, which is often integrated into data centre infrastructure management environments, serving as “an out-of-band access solution to access servers if in-band management tools fail,” and is not surprising experiencing significant growth as the demand for AI-driven data centres surges; and Real-Time KVM solutions, which “continue to be most widely deployed in control room environments,” says Hempel, noting that IHSEs key solutions for demanding KVM applications is Draco XStreme.

Given the overall shift towards the use of IP KVM, it is to be expected that KVM often tends to be part of the IT stack planning operation these days – although once again that is not without certain caveats and conditions particular to KVM.

“As KVM systems move onto IP networks, they are more often managed by IT teams and integrated into existing network environments,” says Bauer, who notes that G&D’s products for KVM include the DynamicWorkplace-CON KVM operator module. “At the same time, KVM has not lost its AV roots. Performance expectations such as low latency, high image quality, and reliable multi-monitor operation remain essential. Modern KVM sits between AV and IT, combining the user experience demands of AV with the structure and scalability of IT systems.”

Invited to consider whether KVM is now largely part of the IT stack, Hempel says: “For IP-based KVM solutions, particularly real-time IP KVM, this statement is largely accurate. But in highly secure or direct-connect KVM systems, particularly those based on proprietary architectures, these solutions are still closely aligned with traditional AV environments in terms of system architecture and maintenance.”

SECURITY REQUIREMENTS
Meanwhile, due both to the nature of many control room applications and the hostile global cyber environment, there is also more and more emphasis on cyber security around KVM deployments.

“IP-based systems introduce more potential vulnerabilities compared to non-IP-based systems,” observes Hempel. “New regulations, such as the EU Cyber Resilience Act (EU-CRA), further reinforce the need for structured security processes. Consequently manufacturers must identify potential vulnerabilities, implement mitigation strategies, and ensure ongoing monitoring and updates.”

Koutsaris comments that KVM over IP must be designed with security as a foundational element. “Modern IP KVM solutions address this through multiple layers of protection,” he says, “including encryption of video, audio and USB traffic, authentication mechanisms, secure communication protocols, digital certificates, and HTTPS-based management interfaces.”

NEW RISKS
Nonetheless, security remains the very definition of a moving target. New risks are emerging all the time, and it is not becoming easier for organisations to stay one step ahead of cybercrime gangs. That said, a well-executed IP KVM solution can protect security whilst also enabling the remote access that tends to be essential for many environments these days.

Halksworth believes that the awareness for cybersecurity requirements is “ever-increasing” and the overall landscape is becoming “more complex and challenging”. As organisations continue to embrace remote operations, distributed teams and IP-based infrastructure, the importance of access control, encryption and authentication becomes essential and is no longer an option but essential, he continues. “Adder’s KVM solutions act as an enabler in secure environments, centralising critical systems and still maintaining complete control at a distance.”

For Black Box – whose flagship products include the Emerald IP KVM solution for command and control in government, transportation, manufacturing, and broadcast and media – Isola says: “The overall cybersecurity climate is growing more and more malicious. The convenience of remote access is sometimes at odds with isolation principles required to support maximum security. Traditional point to point KVM was previously treated as a passive peripheral whereas IP KVM should be considered an active IT asset. To address rising threats, its imperative that organisations apply IT engineering disciplines including active monitoring, patch management/firmware consistency across endpoints, certification management, and network segmentation to help mitigate risk.”

GROWTH MARKETS
There is general agreement among vendors about the major growth markets for KVM today. In terms of the more ‘traditional’ customers of real-time KVM, security-oriented sectors – including government, military, public safety and essential infrastructure – continue to generate robust demand.

But elsewhere, broadcast and live production is proving to be a real boom market for IP KVM. The trend towards remote production – where more broadcast tasks are carried out back at the broadcast centre, allowing smaller crews to be on-site – aligns neatly with IP KVM’s ability to deliver low-latency, high-resolution video.

For Matrox Video – whose key product families include the Matrox Extio IP KVM line for secure, low-latency remote access to powerful workstations over standard IP networks – Koutsaris notes that while control rooms remain a core market, KVM is increasingly deployed far beyond traditional broadcast and operations environments. “One of the fastest-growing areas outside of control rooms is live production and events,” she says. “Large-scale concerts, festivals and immersive experiences often require powerful media servers and graphics workstations to be centralised for space, noise and thermal reasons, while operators need real-time, low-latency access from multiple locations. IP KVM enables this flexibility across long distances using fiber or standard IP networks.”

Hybrid and distributed production applications – whether they be in ‘pure’ broadcast settings, so to speak, or conferencing and corporate environments – are another source of growth. That said, Bauer notes that the strongest growth momentum is in broadcast/media workflows, especially where organisations are moving toward IP-based production and remote/hybrid operations. “These environments have very clear pain points (latency, image quality, multi-monitor performance, and secure remote access), and KVM over IP fits naturally as production becomes more distributed and IT-network-centric.”

Centralised production galleries, remote production, complex multi-location editing and playout set-ups, and shared high-performance workstations are among the broadcast environments where IP KVM is now proving invaluable.

DATA CENTRES
Outside of broadcast and production-related scenarios, it won’t come as much surprise to discover that data centres are predicted to be a hugely important source of growth in the future. Putting aside the not inconsiderable environmental concerns around the cooling required for very energy-intensive facilities, multiple reports suggest that global data centre capacity will nearly double over the next four years. Issued in January, JLL’s Global Data Center Outlook forecasts a rise from 103 GW to 200 GW by 2030). Whilst cloud is an important growth factor, JLL predicts that AI workloads could represent 50 percent of all data centre capacity by 2030. With both a huge rise in the number of data centre estates that will require consistent and reliable control and management, IP KVM seems very well-placed to benefit from the AI revolution.

With industrial and healthcare applications among the others cited by our interviewees, it’s evident that the outlook for KVM – driven by the latest IP KVM solutions – is looking extremely positive. There’s no doubt that traditional environments such as control rooms remain huge business for KVM vendors and integrators, with the underlying principles of the technology that first made them popular there continuing to be as sound as ever.

But with the advent of IP-based KVM, it’s clear that it is also venturing into new areas with considerable speed. In particular, the increasingly complex and multi-site workflows of live broadcast production are perfectly complemented by IP KVM.

Growing cost and logistical pressures in live broadcast mean that ease of deployment and rock-solid reliability are absolutely critical, and KVM has the ability to address these needs – and in such a way that the back-end of the technology is essentially invisible to users.

Then there is the burgeoning demand for many of the same capabilities in healthcare, transportation and industrial environments – all potentially significant markets for KVM suppliers moving forward. And with those same KVM vendors bringing to market far more new solutions in recent times than there was space for in this article, this is one area of innovation that has an especially bright future.

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