Business model: Fear (since 1946!)

Now that I’ve taken the plunge on a 3-year alarm monitoring contract…. Time to rant on the process.

Background:

1.0/old school Alarm Companies really have no game but their original game plan of selling fear and then selling you more fear. Their entire offerings revolve around your fear.

Bay Alarm is a California residential/commercial alarm provider. If you’re in the Bay Area you’re more than likely aware of their style of marketing…

“What have you got to loose”

“Who’s watching when your lights are out?”

“Better a Year Too Soon Than a Day Too Late!”

They also pride themselves on “Since 1946″. I can’t say that that slogan is really a selling point for me. I’d rather have the latest features then know that the company is older than my parents…

the Process:

As I learned today, programming even a modern alarm system is still an arcane process that involves a 12-digit keypad as your primary interface to a complex sytstem. Imagine if you have to control your PC/Mac with only the “0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 * #” keys…. Well an alarm system isn’t quite that complex (as your PC) but 12 keys for config and control is not an ideal interface by any stretch of the imagination. They’ve evolved it to the next step and have the ability to push down your configuration from their data center over the phone. In any case there is really no place for the end user to easily manage any part of this. You rely on them for any future growth or changes to the system.

Bottom line: With the 1.0 alarm companies (think: ADT, Brinks, Bay Alarm, etc…) you rely on the company for setup, config and control. You interface with them only at your physical alarm site and through the telephone and the trusty but antiquated 12-digit keypad.

the Future:

Enter companies like uControl and alarm.com – while they still rely on the same hardware on the doors and windows etc… they add the familiar language of: web consoles, remote access and SMS among others to put you in complete control and awareness of your security. I obviously really wanted to use uControl as my monitoring and control provider but being a newcomer and a bit of a local-play (Austin, TX) they couldn’t point me to a local and trusted alarm installer to provide me with the hardware platform for my home in (Oakland, CA). Here’s the kicker… their modern and feature-packed service costs less than what I pay for Bay Alarm…

If you’d like a quick peak at what uControl provides they had an excellent presentation at ‘Demo’ last year… Check it out!

I’ve been chatting with Mark and Eric about the dire lack of web consoles for residential HVAC, Alarm and Irigation systems…. 8 years ago you could buy a refrigerator with a computer built in to it… They had some grand visions of kitchen computing – while staring at your fridge. There wasn’t really a market for them – too bad LG hadn’t considered a slightly more useful application of technology…