Your either on the bus or just missed it. We try to keep you and our clients informed as early as possible, but eventually someone comes out with a study to reiterate what we’ve been saying. [...CK]
Parks Associates’ Smart Energy Summit covers partnership and bundling strategies driving energy management to the consumer market
Submitted to HomeToys.com on: 02/16/2012, 8:48 am
Bundling energy management with IP services will drive adoption of multiservice home networks to over 20% of U.S. households by 2015, according to Parks Associates. The market research firm is hosting the third-annual Smart Energy Summit: Engaging the Consumer on February 28-March 1 in Austin, Texas. The event features executives from companies including Duke, Reliant, TXU, Sprint, Verizon, Lowe’s, and Best Buy discussing strategies to expand consumer interest and adoption in energy management and bundling opportunities with IP-based security, monitoring, and control.
“The list of attendees and presenters for this year’s summit is a who’s who of the energy management industry,” said Tom Kerber, Director, Energy and Home Systems Research, Parks Associates. “The summit is an ideal opportunity to network and establish relationships with key players within this growing market.”
Utilities, telecom and cable operators, big box retailers, and security firms will provide insights from their direct consumer experiences and discuss future partnerships. Device manufacturers, OEMs, and home control platform vendors will discuss interoperability and technology and how these solutions will be applied in the market. Technology providers, system suppliers, transmission system operators, and regulators will discuss efforts to develop industry-wide standards, lessons from international case studies, and the role of government in this market.
“Understanding the perspectives of all the market players will help attendees grow their knowledge of the industry and apply that knowledge to their company’s strategy and product roadmaps,” said Tricia Parks, CEO, Parks Associates. “Consumers are interested in ways to reduce energy consumption and maximize efficiency at home. Connected devices, smart grids, and energy management technologies offer new opportunities for industry players to meet these needs.”
Smart Energy Summit features presentations and panel discussions by industry analysts, executives, and strategists on the state of the market and the emerging business opportunities. The unique combination of industry expertise, extensive consumer research, and insightful market analyses and forecasts makes this event different than any other.
To register, visit www.smartenergysummit2012.com or contact 972-490-1113, sales@parksassociates.com.
About Smart Energy Summit
Smart Energy Summit: Engaging the Consumer, hosted by Parks Associates, is the premier conference studying the market for residential energy management and smart grid technologies.
This event features a unique combination of market research, including Parks Associates’ landmark Residential Energy Management service, and real-world expertise, with industry experts examining the impact of smart grids on home systems. The conference deeply examines the business models, consumer value propositions, and the deployment plans of energy utilities, cloud services, home systems and communications service providers. www.smartenergysummit2012.com
Apple-based home automation manufacturer Savant no longer ‘last major control player without its own lighting control,’ thanks to acquisition of LiteTouch.
By Julie Jacobson, February 21, 2012
Savant Systems, best known for its high-end Apple-based home automation systems, has acquired LiteTouch, maker of lighting control solutions for residential and commercial venues.
Savant bought LiteTouch from Nortek Inc. (Nasdaq: NTK), which had acquired the lighting company in 2007 and blended it into Panamax, maker of power management solutions.
“We were the last major control player without its own lighting control,” said Savant general manager Jim Carroll in an interview with CE Pro on Tuesday.
Savant already offers its own automation systems (naturally) as well as its own audio/video distribution and control products. Lighting control, he says, “is the last big missing piece.”
And what better way to enter the field than with the acquisition of a 30-year-old company that, Carroll says, created the first solid-state lighting control system? “As a lighting control company, it has a very strong programming platform that’s easy to configure, which really attracted us to them.”
Carroll says Savant wasn’t just surveying LiteTouch’s lighting-control products, but its entire portfolio including designer keypads, sensors and load control for energy management.
“We pick up this whole family of keypads, which aesthetically is a tremendous asset,” Carroll notes. “There are a lot of jobs we do that don’t have lighting control, but that still need keypads.”
Beyond products, though, LiteTouch reaches channels that Savant does not, including electrical contractors and lighting specifiers. “The channels line up very well,” he says.
Savant already integrates with several lighting control systems – including LiteTouch, Lutron, Powerline Control Systems (PCS), Rako (Europe) and Vantage Controls, a Legrand company – enjoying a particularly cozy relationship with Lutron, the overwhelming leader in the category with a 38 percent market share among home systems integrators.
Carroll says Savant will continue its aggressive support of these and other vendors. The company puts considerable effort into the integration with third-party subsystems, allowing integrators to basically push a button to migrate programming into the Savant platform, according to Carroll.
Savant, as well as its dealers, appreciates the variety of subsystems in the partner program and the Massachusetts-based company has no plans to pull back its development in lighting-control integration, Carroll says.
The sentiment echoes that of other established home-control brands, many of which have built their own high-end lighting-control businesses organically: AMX and Crestron have offered their own lighting systems for several years, with great success. Last year, mainstream provider Control4 began shipping its own hardwired solution, which was first shown in 2008 (article).
Each of these companies, like LiteTouch, offers hardwired (“panelized” or “distributed”) lighting controls, as well as proprietary wireless systems and hybrid solutions.
Likewise, the big lighting-control firms have built their own home-control ecosystems: Lutron recently launched an energy management suite to complement its lighting and shading control solutions; Vantage Controls built out an entire audio/video/automation platform years ago; Powerline Control Systems (PCS), developer of the relatively inexpensive powerline-based technology Universal Powerline Bus (UPB), has been expanding its line in recent years to control audio, video, energy management and other subsystems; LiteTouch itself has tread more gently into the home-control space, but does offer a suite of energy management and monitoring products.
The Rise of Savant, the Fall of LiteTouch
Savant is an up-and-comer in high-end home control – often considered to be the first viable competitor to long-time leaders AMX and Crestron, as well as Vantage and Nortek-owned Elan Home Systems.
Founded in 2005, Savant began shipping products in 2008.
In 2011, 11 percent of residential integrators surveyed by CE Pro said they had used Savant within the past two years, up from 5% in 2010 and 2% in 2009.
In 2011, 3 percent of CE pros said Savant was their most-used home automation brand, up from zero in previous years.
The numbers are even rosier for Savant among higher-end integrators, which make up the bulk of CE Pro 100 dealers. Among that group, 24 percent said they used Savant in 2011, the No. 3 brand behind Crestron (64%) and Control4 (55%).
The previous year, only 10 percent of CE Pro 100 dealers were using Savant, then the No. 5 brand.
LiteTouch, meanwhile, has been trending downwards over the past few years.
In 2005, for instance, 4 percent of CE pros called LiteTouch their most frequently-used brand of lighting control. By 2009 that number was down to 1 percent — though still enough to be in the top five favored by CE Pro 100 dealers — and in 2011 the figure was zero.
However, CE Pro research indicates that many integrators at least have LiteTouch in their arsenal. Between 2005 and 2011, 6 percent to 8 percent of dealers surveyed said they had used LiteTouch products in the last two years.
What LiteTouch Brings to the Table
When asked about LiteTouch’s slipping market share in the CE pro channel, Carroll could not point to a specific reason for the decline, but notes, “It’s not the technology.”
He’s rosy on the innovation within LiteTouch, and the strong engineering staff. He appreciates LiteTouch’s elegant keypad selection, of which there is nothing equivalent in the Savant line. He also sees LiteTouch’s sensors and other accessories giving Savant a quick path to additional home automation control points.
As for the integration of LiteTouch and Savant, Carroll says that LiteTouch dealers will be Savant dealers starting today, and that the company has called all of the related parties — distribution partners, reps, specifiers, etc.
“We will continue to support all of our partners, he says. “We enjoy a great relationship with them, and we hope to continue that.”
Carroll adds that LiteTouch employees will be kept in place at the Salt Lake City facility, though the branding itself will begin to transition.
“It will probably be something like ‘Savant Smart Lighting Control powered by LiteTouch,” he says of the newly acquired offerings. “Obviously we’ll want to move away from the LiteTouch brand, but it’s still a very valuable brand [during the transitional phase].”
When you hear about “connectivity”, you probably think of gadgets. But according to this infographic, derived from a GSMA commissioned study by Machina Research, over 30% of connected devices are actually home appliances. The figures foreshadows the “networked ecosystem” of connected devices by 2020, highlighting a day when everything in your home will be speaking to one another: smart refrigerators, computerized blinds, tablets used as surveillance devices, and more.
I’m optimistic about the day when these domestic devices all “intelligently connect.” What home element are you most eager to see evolve with technology?
Via FLYTIP
Interesting article as to the stability of the iPhone, iPad etc and Apple platform as a whole [...CK]
Halliburton defects from BlackBerry to iOS
RIM has taken one of its largest, more conspicuous blows as a leaked e-mail and subsequent confirmation have revealed on Monday that Halliburton is switching from the BlackBerry to the iPhone. After “significant research,” according to an AppleInsider copy of the memo, the controversial energy giant has told staff that it will transition from the BlackBerry to the iPhone, described at first as a one-year transition but now described as two. Apple’s platform had superior features, controls, and app development security, Halliburton said.
The switch would be a uniform one and wouldn’t lead to a mixed environment with support for Android or others. The homogeneity was needed to “better support” mobile app efforts at Halliburton, a spokeswoman said. Staff and customers could get to the company’s internally developed apps through a secure link.
Apple was “engaged” in the project, the spokeswoman added.
For RIM, the switch is a very damaging one. Most companies allowing iPhone adoption have done so in mixed environments where the BlackBerry stays. Halliburton would be giving up all of the 4,500 BlackBerry smartphones on its network, depriving RIM of a high-profile corporate customer.
The step would also represent a watershed moment for Apple’s acceptance in the enterprise. It has mostly refused to compromise iOS or the Mac for the sake of the enterprise, but the additions it has made have been increasingly accepted to the point where nearly all the Fortune 500 is either actively using or testing iPhones and iPads.
RIM had once considered its corporate base unassailable by Apple or others due to its unique end-to-end data encryption. A poor app market, slow hardware updates, and a nearly four-day outage may have soured companies who were faced with having to give up numerous features of more advanced modern just for the sake of messaging. An answer might come in the form of BlackBerry 10 devices late this year, but it might not come in time for some.
By Electronista Staff
Read more: http://www.electronista.com/articles/12/02/06/halliburton.defects.from.blackberry.to.ios/#ixzz1leo8AEBR
Some time ago I came across this video in part 1 (re-posted below) of where technology is taking us. Well recently Corning released a part 2 and it is just as impressive.
TAKE A LOOK …
… the first A Day Made of Glass is here http://www.kozimediadesign.com/blog/?p=119
… a similar technology post http://www.kozimediadesign.com/blog/?p=225
