Among the rise of new competitors, the established security leader is offering users a bunch of new features.
Nowadays, consumers who are interested in protecting their homes have more choices than before, thanks to the continuous efforts of companies for better home protection. With the home automation services like fee-free DIY Simplisafe, crowd-funded DIY projects like Piper and iSmartAlarm that still continue to improve. For well-known leading industries like ADT, these budding security companies are slowly becoming a threat as more and more consumers find better value with the smaller companies.
ADT then announced a list of upgrades to ADT Pulse, its premier home security package. One of the features is the ADT Pulse Voice app, which enable users to handle their home security and automation needs by simple voice commands. Furthermore, ADT announced Canopy, a mobile app that offers users added protection and networking while you are on the go. Canopy lets its users to know the location and communicate with friends and family members in a virtual circle. The live-monitoring-based “Chaperone” service provides safety and peace of mind in situations where you are entering a dark parking garage or walking around campus at night. It also has additional remote controls for garage doors, along with a touch-friendly user interface control panel for controlled devices such as lights, thermostats, locks, and some appliances. With the additional features, ADT perchance is following the trend of unobtrusive DIY setups that can be quickly installed and doesn’t need to be hard-wired into your home.
Along with the new upgrades, ADT announced its plans to form strategic partnerships with other companies to help expand its scope of services. ADT will now offer its users with digital security for their data and devices, thanks to their partnership with McAfee. With the partnership with Ford, ADT lets users control the garage door and thermostat from a car. ADT is also in partnership with Ideal Life for implementing its ADT Health platform of providing real-time health management and care-giving support services.
Other than their partnerships with other companies, ADT also made an unusual move for an established leader in what others would call a mature industry. ADT will offer Canopy integration to third-party hardware manufacturers. This would mean that smaller security device makers can make use of Canopy and ADT’s monitoring service in their own products.
By offering the monitoring services to others, ADT can benefit from its successful service side, while also strengthening the security offerings and easing the burden of a service overhead from any hardware partner that wants in. A sharp move by ADT, and not something one would have expected from them.
For strategic shifts, this plan would seem be a good time for ADT to implement, as the industry bar is certainly on the rise. With the multiyear contracts and significant monthly fees getting harder to justify with the rising of other options, and without having to rework its entire business model, the most apparent way for ADT to remain competitive is to offer up more features in its product. There’s no news yet about how the new services will affect the pricing, but more information should be disclosed about the plans in spring.
Published with permission and written in behalf of AUCOM Video Surveillance Systems.
