A desire to have convenience and control in our own homes seems to be universal. But in many parts of the world the technology infrastructure to support such services has not been universally available. In fact, it has only been within the past decade or so that people in North America have stepped up their use of broadband and cellular networks in place of landline connections to send monitoring alerts.
A recent survey of security dealers from Parks Associates shows 91% use a cellular network and 77% use broadband communications in order to monitor alerts on the security systems they install. This represents a growing trend and has enabled companies like Alarm.com to take a stronghold in the security market. The company, which leverages a cellular and Web-based model for providing security and other interactive services to residential customers and small businesses, surpassed 1 million active subscribers last spring.
Such momentum has the company thinking global expansion. Throughout the next 12-18 months, Alarm.com's plans encompass Latin America and parts of EMEA, including such countries as Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, South Africa, along with several countries in Sub-Sahara Africa. But such expansion requires infrastructure improvements, the likes of which seem to be coming around quicker than anticipated.
Alarm.com's senior vice president of global business development Reed Grothe, paints the picture: "Security-centric applications in large parts of the world are still very similar to the U.S. five or ten years ago in that they are largely connected via landlines with conventional dialers with very rudimentary communication options."
Nevertheless, a few converging trends have the company confident that its plans for global expansion can be accommodated. Grothe adds, "In many of these markets there are vast deployments of cellular infrastructure and 3G and 4G networks and a migration to broadband over cellular. More and more, people are getting smartphones, so the technology to support our type of platform is being deployed rapidly around the world. This is driving security providers to update their services so they can take advantage of these trends and increase their marketshare."
The idea is once people see what can be achieved with a cellular-based system like Alarm.com, they will want to leverage the same types of technology to enable automation and interactive security from a fully integrated platform.
But of course before such a move can be successfully executed a number of hurdles need to be overcome; some of which can be handled internally by Alarm.com, others requirethe insight and expertise of partners in the M2M community. For example, the globalization of services brings the need for localization and language support, much of which is being handled internally by Alarm.com. In fact, Alarm.com already supports French, Portuguese, and Spanish, with plans to add many more local versions throughout the next 24 months.
"There are a number of key criteria we look for when it comes to the ideal partnership. The most critical component to making our application work is M2M connection," says Grothe. "We look for a carrier that will design a partnership scheme to support our business model, create VPN tunnels to our data centers, add redundancy and Web services to manage the network, and initiate SMS commands to wake up controls if they go to sleep, etc."
Enter Vodafone. For more than 20 years the company has taken leadership role in M2M through its ability to evolve services to meet the changing nature of markets worldwide. Case in point is its comprehensive approach to helping companies adopt and execute M2M on a multi-national scale. Its breadth of services includes a single platform, global SIM, standard set of SLAs (service level agreements), and access to a global ecosystem of partners.
"Of particular value," says Grothe, "is the global SIM. It simply eliminates the need for Alarm.com to provide unique SIMs for each country. This, along with its robust Web-service platform to manage the network and provisioning, aligns well with the worldwide plans for Alarm.com."
Speaking about the global SIM, Andrew Morawski, Vodafone's head of M2M Americas, says it is important to provide companies with one single management interface, one global SLA, and a consistent multi-national customer service support, 24/7, while eliminating roaming costs and setting a predictable global cost structure.
Grothe agrees, adding, "Vodafone's global SIM has some key attributes such as the ability to roam on other third-party carriers. This means there is network redundancy and they can hop to an alternative network to keep the connection up and running as needed. We have a lot of confidence in Vodafone's reliability as a provider and partner in our global channel development program."
The partnership approach also involves working with third-party security control manufacturers. This is important to Alarm.com because the cellular communication gateways often have to be integrated into their platform. This dependence on third parties can be difficult to manage when security control standards vary across the globe. It has to enable different controls from a variety of manufacturers and make the right investments to make it all come together.
"Vodafone really understands our market requirements and has great M2M expertise," adds Grothe. "A lot of carriers don't understand what infrastructure is required. They don't seem to grasp the importance of network reliability which is critical when so many M2M applications are more life critical than general cellular services."
To say Alarm.com's applications are data efficient would be an understatement. The 'life critical' aspect described by Grothe tends to resonate when you start to talking about providing security and protection for loved ones. In essence, this means the data connection can never be compromised."If you look at the market there is a flood of providers in the automation lifestyle self notification security space that run over IP networks or local broadband. We are unique in that we run largely over cellular and advocate cellular connectivity as the most reliable, secure, and most trouble-free connection," adds Grothe.
Many factors continue to push the adoption of M2M on a multi-national basis, including regulation, sustainability, costsavings opportunities, productivity-improvement opportunities, and demand for innovation. "Increasingly more manufacturers and solutions providers are looking to connect everyday devices to the Internet in order to give their customers a more personal, safe, and fulfilling experience," says Morawski. "M2M services are also helping businesses to boost productivity by automating key processes."
This thought process is in line for all that M2M can enable for Alarm.com going forward. Beyond security, Alarm.com is also leveraging things like location-based services and geocoordinates of a premise in order to understand data related to such things as indoor and outdoor temperature and typical energy consumption of a property of a certain square footage in a particular market, all with the intent to allow a degree of control whether a person is home or not.
While these are just pieces of the puzzle at this point, Grothe believes it represents the power of what M2M can become. He also believes this evolution will depend largely upon cellular platforms globally, a piece to that puzzle in which Vodafone plays a significant role.
"Part of the power of M2M and this connectivity is to leverage multiple data points and put together the analytics to drive more knowledge to the consumer or to automate more of the activities on the premise," says Grothe. "We are pulling in quality content and aggregating multiple data inputs from other devices or third-party providers to create some integrated intelligence that can have value."
When it comes to establishing strong partners Grothe believes the value comes from both ends of the relationship. "I think there is a synergistic element in that we will add connection points to the M2M solution, but through that we will drive data consumption on the consumer side as they are engaging their home or business … so we believe that our solution also drives adoption of smart devices and the consumption of data through them."
A recent survey of security dealers from Parks Associates shows 91% use a cellular network and 77% use broadband communications in order to monitor alerts on the security systems they install. This represents a growing trend and has enabled companies like Alarm.com to take a stronghold in the security market. The company, which leverages a cellular and Web-based model for providing security and other interactive services to residential customers and small businesses, surpassed 1 million active subscribers last spring.
Such momentum has the company thinking global expansion. Throughout the next 12-18 months, Alarm.com's plans encompass Latin America and parts of EMEA, including such countries as Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, South Africa, along with several countries in Sub-Sahara Africa. But such expansion requires infrastructure improvements, the likes of which seem to be coming around quicker than anticipated.
Alarm.com's senior vice president of global business development Reed Grothe, paints the picture: "Security-centric applications in large parts of the world are still very similar to the U.S. five or ten years ago in that they are largely connected via landlines with conventional dialers with very rudimentary communication options."
Nevertheless, a few converging trends have the company confident that its plans for global expansion can be accommodated. Grothe adds, "In many of these markets there are vast deployments of cellular infrastructure and 3G and 4G networks and a migration to broadband over cellular. More and more, people are getting smartphones, so the technology to support our type of platform is being deployed rapidly around the world. This is driving security providers to update their services so they can take advantage of these trends and increase their marketshare."
The idea is once people see what can be achieved with a cellular-based system like Alarm.com, they will want to leverage the same types of technology to enable automation and interactive security from a fully integrated platform.
But of course before such a move can be successfully executed a number of hurdles need to be overcome; some of which can be handled internally by Alarm.com, others requirethe insight and expertise of partners in the M2M community. For example, the globalization of services brings the need for localization and language support, much of which is being handled internally by Alarm.com. In fact, Alarm.com already supports French, Portuguese, and Spanish, with plans to add many more local versions throughout the next 24 months.
"There are a number of key criteria we look for when it comes to the ideal partnership. The most critical component to making our application work is M2M connection," says Grothe. "We look for a carrier that will design a partnership scheme to support our business model, create VPN tunnels to our data centers, add redundancy and Web services to manage the network, and initiate SMS commands to wake up controls if they go to sleep, etc."
Enter Vodafone. For more than 20 years the company has taken leadership role in M2M through its ability to evolve services to meet the changing nature of markets worldwide. Case in point is its comprehensive approach to helping companies adopt and execute M2M on a multi-national scale. Its breadth of services includes a single platform, global SIM, standard set of SLAs (service level agreements), and access to a global ecosystem of partners.
"Of particular value," says Grothe, "is the global SIM. It simply eliminates the need for Alarm.com to provide unique SIMs for each country. This, along with its robust Web-service platform to manage the network and provisioning, aligns well with the worldwide plans for Alarm.com."
Speaking about the global SIM, Andrew Morawski, Vodafone's head of M2M Americas, says it is important to provide companies with one single management interface, one global SLA, and a consistent multi-national customer service support, 24/7, while eliminating roaming costs and setting a predictable global cost structure.
Grothe agrees, adding, "Vodafone's global SIM has some key attributes such as the ability to roam on other third-party carriers. This means there is network redundancy and they can hop to an alternative network to keep the connection up and running as needed. We have a lot of confidence in Vodafone's reliability as a provider and partner in our global channel development program."
The partnership approach also involves working with third-party security control manufacturers. This is important to Alarm.com because the cellular communication gateways often have to be integrated into their platform. This dependence on third parties can be difficult to manage when security control standards vary across the globe. It has to enable different controls from a variety of manufacturers and make the right investments to make it all come together.
"Vodafone really understands our market requirements and has great M2M expertise," adds Grothe. "A lot of carriers don't understand what infrastructure is required. They don't seem to grasp the importance of network reliability which is critical when so many M2M applications are more life critical than general cellular services."
To say Alarm.com's applications are data efficient would be an understatement. The 'life critical' aspect described by Grothe tends to resonate when you start to talking about providing security and protection for loved ones. In essence, this means the data connection can never be compromised."If you look at the market there is a flood of providers in the automation lifestyle self notification security space that run over IP networks or local broadband. We are unique in that we run largely over cellular and advocate cellular connectivity as the most reliable, secure, and most trouble-free connection," adds Grothe.
Many factors continue to push the adoption of M2M on a multi-national basis, including regulation, sustainability, costsavings opportunities, productivity-improvement opportunities, and demand for innovation. "Increasingly more manufacturers and solutions providers are looking to connect everyday devices to the Internet in order to give their customers a more personal, safe, and fulfilling experience," says Morawski. "M2M services are also helping businesses to boost productivity by automating key processes."
This thought process is in line for all that M2M can enable for Alarm.com going forward. Beyond security, Alarm.com is also leveraging things like location-based services and geocoordinates of a premise in order to understand data related to such things as indoor and outdoor temperature and typical energy consumption of a property of a certain square footage in a particular market, all with the intent to allow a degree of control whether a person is home or not.
While these are just pieces of the puzzle at this point, Grothe believes it represents the power of what M2M can become. He also believes this evolution will depend largely upon cellular platforms globally, a piece to that puzzle in which Vodafone plays a significant role.
"Part of the power of M2M and this connectivity is to leverage multiple data points and put together the analytics to drive more knowledge to the consumer or to automate more of the activities on the premise," says Grothe. "We are pulling in quality content and aggregating multiple data inputs from other devices or third-party providers to create some integrated intelligence that can have value."
When it comes to establishing strong partners Grothe believes the value comes from both ends of the relationship. "I think there is a synergistic element in that we will add connection points to the M2M solution, but through that we will drive data consumption on the consumer side as they are engaging their home or business … so we believe that our solution also drives adoption of smart devices and the consumption of data through them."