The electronic security and life safety industry has always been very hardware centric. Reflecting over the decades, the great progress demonstrated by the industry has revolved around new hardware or at least new hardware features. Standards such as Z-Wave and Zigbee, along with other advances in interoperability, have accelerated this progress, allowing disparate systems to play well with each other toward bolstering the consumer value proposition.

All this remains relevant while new and exciting platforms continue to appear — and with continued consumer adoption, they all continue to grow. What would you think if you could add new features to your existing subscriber base without rolling a truck or deploying new or additional hardware or systems? You may state that the industry currently has that ability. Features such as adding open and closing reporting comes to mind. Maybe some passive platform features offered by Alarm.com and Resideo’s Total Connect, which provide a little extra to subscribers that aren’t related to new hardware, may qualify.