“The approach that a Ring or SimpliSafe and a host of others have taken is they have found out what the salient needs are with respect to consumers on security . and done a good job of making products appealing. I think the traditional security companies can take a page out of these direct to consumer companies and market the product based on what people are dying to do, which is protect homes and families and alleviate problems. Traditional security companies would be well served to follow suit in their marketing and ad campaigns. ”One thing many in the industry do caution about, however, is not to let the medium swallow the message. “There are a lot of things the industry is starting to focus on as enhancement to the core offerings; but it is important not to get caught up in buzzwords or even the technology itself, but what it enables the customer to do,” says Greg Blackett, senior product manager, Tyco Security Products, Toronto, Canada. “It is still very early days. The end goal is to enhance the existing products and make them more intelligent and help the customer reduce false alarms and bring their total security experience to the next level. But Inder Reddy, Honeywell Security and Fire, says there are actually two schools of thought on where monitoring may be headed. “Some customers have absolutely said ‘We want to leverage our expertise so we are going to get out of the monitoring business and focus on customer service. ’ But as software becomes more and more the way to do things, you could make the case that SaaS types of services are much more scalable and you don’t need to be so large to have economies of scale.