Alarm.com is best known for smart home security, but at Security Essen the company's European team delivered a much more expansive message, highlighting that Alarm.com growth strategy looks beyond the living room. With the US residential market growing more slowly and competition rising, the company is investing in Europe, with new products for businesses, personal safety and solutions for integrations of legacy systems.
Asmag spoke on the show floor with Gabriel Furtado, Lead Technical Account Manager – Europe at Alarm.com, about the company's European expansion.
“For us, Europe is really important,” Furtado said. “We're strongest at home in America, but we are looking more than ever into international markets.”
Alarm.com has teams in the UK, Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, the Netherlands, the Nordics, Poland and Eastern Europe. The company is well-established in Southern Europe and the UK, and has growing business in Germany, France and the Nordics.
“Even if many of those markets are within the EU, each one of them has their own regulations,” Furtado said, highlighting that regulatory regimens pose challenges, but also opportunities.
Alarm.com's growth strategy has involved several acquisitions over the past few years, from OpenEye to Shooter Detection Systems and CheKt, but after initially focusing on the US, the company is now looking beyond its domestic market.
In contrast to many brands with a core business in home security, Alarm.com sells primarily through channel players.
“It's always B2B,” Furtado said. “Our partners do the B2C part.”
Offering solutions beyond the home
Alarm.com is increasingly focused on providing solutions for small and medium-sized businesses, as it seeks to offer scalable video-centric systems open for the integration of technology from other security domains. New products include the Prism camera line, with 5- and 8-megapixel PoE cameras and a choice of analytics, as well as a doorbell that doubles as an access control reader and can be connected to a door controller.
A new integration with video intercom maker BAS.IP is aimed at developers of apartment buildings. Residents can receive intercom calls in the Alarm.com app, which also shows video from their home and lets them arm or disarm the panel.
“Little by little, the technology is going with you out of your home,” F stated.
Other examples include a car connector that tracks the vehicle, reports break-in attempts and sends geofence alerts to family members.
Meanwhile, a new personal safety device includes a panic button and fall detection. When the button is pressed, a designated monitoring station is called automatically and a two-way audio connection is established. Alarm.com sees application scenarios not just in elderly and childcare, but for lone workers in hazardous environments.
“We are thinking a lot about solutions that can fill gaps in the European market,” Furtado said. “For example, many elderly in Europe don't want to move to a care facility, and their families want to look after them at home. The system can track activity and send a notification when there's none for a long time: 'Hey, check on Grandpa, something isn't okay.'”
Alarm.com is also working with French company Nami on Wi-Fi sensing, which creates an alarm zone between two smart plugs, initially for DIY residential use. The technology can sense desired activity in homes, for example when a family lives with an elderly member, and send notifications to their phones if there is no activity for long durations of time while the elderly person is home alone.
Options for users of legacy systems
For end users with legacy installations, Alarm.com is offering a universal communicator for dozens of alarm panels.
“You can keep the panel you have and just add a new communicator,” Furtado explained. “It uses 4G instead of older technologies and connects to the central station as normal.”
That avoids the need to retrain customers and replace a panel they like, and lets dealers add services that raise revenue per customer,” Furtado added. “Existing cameras can also be recorded in the cloud and viewed in the Alarm.com app.”
A fire communicator is available in the US for now, and Europe may follow.
Independence under the Alarm.com umbrella
Alarm.com's acquired brands stay operationally independent, but are well integrated. Professional video brand OpenEye streams video to Alarm.com and receives events back. The integration of CHeKT, which specializes in sending video analytics events to alarm monitoring centers, will follow step by step.
“Such acquisitions are adding more value to what we already have,” Furtado said. “They help the newly acquired companies expand their offerings to new markets and complement what we have as Alarm.com.”