With the advent of the Internet of Things and the subsequent bevy of internet-enabled products that have hit the market in recent years, security dealers are now able to offer home and business owners a wide range of services that once seemed impossible. But as more and more IoT products and services become a reality in today’s increasingly connected world, it has also become more difficult for dealers to streamline the installation of so-called “smart” devices within a residence or business.
Enter Observables, a Santa Barbara, Calif.-based company founded by CEO Abe Schryer and CTO Ron Gans, which has developed a signal router dubbed IOBOT and its accompanying AlwaysOn cloud platform that seeks to revolutionize the smart home market for security dealers.
Based on their experience in the market with traditional alarm panel offerings, Avi Rosenthal, chief marketing officer for Observables, said that both Schryer and Gans realized there was a lack of high-level understanding in the industry as it relates to communications and secure networking. The two constantly struggled with what equipment – routers, networking equipment, cell radios, etc. – that needed be on the trucks of technicians to satisfy the requirements of their installations.
“Every system used a different piece of equipment and a different configuration and they thought, ‘wouldn’t it be much easier if we could build a device that would be more universal for the dealer channel, allow for less equipment to be carried on the truck, and that the equipment we did have to carry would be much more configurable and flexible in its implementation,’” explains Rosenthal, who formerly served as the vice president of security and control at Nortek. “That’s where the IOBOT signal router was dreamed up.”
Rosenthal emphasizes that the IOBOT is a “signal router,” not a network router per se nor a hub or a gateway even though it provides some similar functionality.
“We call it a signal router because it can take in virtually any type of electronic signal, whether it be an HID card reader, Ethernet or cellular, and convert it to virtually any other kind of RF or wire-line signal,” Rosenthal says. “So, if you have a legacy contact ID security panel and you want it to communicate via cellular network, the IOBOT will do that. If you have an access control system that needs both voice and data lines sent to different parts of a building, the IOBOT will do that.
However, in addition to having this piece of hardware in the IOBOT, Rosenthal said they realized they also needed to have a software component given today’s IoT landscape and developed the AlwaysOn platform in conjunction with it.
“The AlwaysOn platform allows for complete configuration and flexibility of the IOBOT hardware,” he adds. “There are different dealer tools, different end-user configurations, and the whole thing is brandable because obviously what is most important to a dealer is their word of mouth customer relationships and so the whole system is brandable for the individual dealer. These were systems developed by dealers for dealers, so they understand how to address the needs of the dealership in general.”
The combination of these technologies enables dealers to more easily overcome some of the common issues presented by existing systems within many homes and businesses. For example, Rosenthal says dealers oftentimes have to work with cable modems installed by broadband providers that are outside of their control when installing a security system, which present challenges such as changing IP addresses and downtime depending on how they are configured.
“The IOBOT and the AlwaysOn software allow you to become the router of the system so if you have things like IP cameras or other systems connected to the home or business owners’ broadband, you can now configure the router itself remotely, so if there is a change of something like an IP address or a configuration on the internet provider side, the dealer doesn’t have to roll a truck in order to fix the problem,” he says.
Aside from addressing some of these common problems, the AlwaysOn platform also enables dealers to provide various hosted and managed service offerings to their customers.
“A lot of security dealers are just beginning to realize the value of providing services to their customers than just simple security monitoring. Our system allows you to take advantage of some of the RMR business models that exist out there today, things like cybersecurity, monitoring of networks, reconfiguration of networks, and backup communication pathways,” Rosenthal says. “If people are willing to trust you with the safety and security of their property and their family, I imagine that they would also be willing to trust you with the security of the network and the data stored on that network.”
Rosenthal says they will be bringing their solution to the market through both traditional security product distributors as well as direct to dealers themselves. The company is also working on an OEM licensing deal that will allow larger companies in the market to leverage their AlwaysOn cloud system.
Dealers can expect to pay about the same price for the IOBOT that they would for a quality wireless access point router, which is somewhere in the $150 to $250 range, according to Rosenthal. He says the recurring revenue model for their cloud-based offerings will also be similarly priced to many of the interactive services that exist within the industry today, ranging from the low single digits to around $15 to $20 a month depending upon the configuration and the services required.
About the Author:
Joel Griffin is the Editor-in-Chief of SecurityInfoWatch.com and a veteran security journalist. You can reach him at [email protected].
