By Sean Patton, Published Apr 13, 2018, 09:41am EDT
Alarm.com has millions of subscribers, but the company has traditionally been mostly a residential/home focused offering. ADC's new Smart Business Solutions service plan adds some major pieces to the platform and could be a major competition increase for SMB. Inside this note, we examine:
Why this may be a major competition increase in SMB
New access control
Business reports including sensor and employee activity
The access control portion has a long way to go. It is nice that it integrates with the app but we found several issues. No way to import users, and there is no real-time status of whether the door is actually closed or open from the home page despite having a sensor connected.
Not sure if your pricing for the panel is list, because that is what we pay for it from ADC and it is not being distributed through distribution.
As noted, Vivotek is making the wifi cameras, although this could be changing. Our test confirms this.
For new wired cameras, they do look like Hik cameras. However, we have not tested them. I'll further clarify the note to make the wired/wireless point clearer.
We have an older camera and used the MAC tool listed above and it does come up as Vivotek. We just received 2 of the new cameras, 1 bullet, and 1 dome. They are installed on our bldg for testing. The same tool shows them as alarm.com cameras.
These are their newest cameras. We just put them up yesterday and I need to see how they work at night. We are excited about them since we wanted a 2MP PoE camera.
"We just learned that the access control will not be sold thru distribution. Will only be sold direct from ADC to Integrator per ADC’s OEM agreement with Mercury."
This makes that online test that ADC requires before selling access more important, because the access piece is only available direct from ADC.
I'm not a big fan of ADC, mostly due to wide-scale marketing to consumers. However, they have proven themselves to build in incredibly robust and capable cloud platform. Their feature set is impressive and will only get better as time goes on. This is the advantage of being in the software business. I wish more alarm companies would push software development harder.
They may not sell to end users right now. However, they could tomorrow. It wouldn't take much. They have the capital to change their ads just enough to say, "Buy direct from ADC today!" I would rather support a company that is less likely to market to end users and be involved in building their platform even if it is slightly inferior in features. Plus the ADC contract is not appealing to me. When we were deciding between ADC and DMP a few years ago I took the gamble and went with DMP and it's paid off.
At ISC West 2019 (IPVM Full Report), Alarm.com showed a new "Commercial SVR" 16 channel NVR appliance offering 2, 6 and 12TB of local storage. MSRP is $330, $475 and $790 respectively. The system will support clip recording to the cloud for alarm events. They also said they are offering their "AI" video analytics (IPVM Test) for all commercial cameras. There will be a new commercial video service pricing plan, but they were not disclosing pricing at the show.
Additionally, they said they are increasing marketing in 2019 for multi-family, wellness/heathcare, and home builder verticals, and said they have not typically sold well in those markets.
Unless they open the platform up to other cameras, I do not see them doing well in multi-family. We do a lot there, and we install alarms on the ADC platform in leasing offices but there is no way we would use their cameras in a community
Seeing as how they're rebranding Hikvision cameras, I'm guessing it is.
Agree
Disagree
Informative
Unhelpful
Funny
Create New Topic
Read this IPVM report for free.
This article is part of IPVM's 7,334 reports and 972 tests and is only available to subscribers. To get a one-time preview of our work, enter your work email to access the full article.
Comments (16)
Undisclosed Integrator #1
The access control portion has a long way to go. It is nice that it integrates with the app but we found several issues. No way to import users, and there is no real-time status of whether the door is actually closed or open from the home page despite having a sensor connected.
Not sure if your pricing for the panel is list, because that is what we pay for it from ADC and it is not being distributed through distribution.
Create New Topic
Ryan O'Daniel
Unless I missed the text somewhere in the article...most of those shown in the picture are Hikvision cameras.
Create New Topic
Undisclosed Integrator #1
We have an older camera and used the MAC tool listed above and it does come up as Vivotek. We just received 2 of the new cameras, 1 bullet, and 1 dome. They are installed on our bldg for testing. The same tool shows them as alarm.com cameras.
Create New Topic
Brian Rhodes
Additional feedback from an ADC dealer:
"We just learned that the access control will not be sold thru distribution. Will only be sold direct from ADC to Integrator per ADC’s OEM agreement with Mercury."
This makes that online test that ADC requires before selling access more important, because the access piece is only available direct from ADC.
Create New Topic
Jay Hobdy
We were part of the beta and can confirm that. Access Control is only available from ADC.
Create New Topic
John Bazyk
IPVMU Certified | 04/24/18 01:17pm
I'm not a big fan of ADC, mostly due to wide-scale marketing to consumers. However, they have proven themselves to build in incredibly robust and capable cloud platform. Their feature set is impressive and will only get better as time goes on. This is the advantage of being in the software business. I wish more alarm companies would push software development harder.
Create New Topic
Sean Patton
Report updated with details from ISC West 2019:
ISC West 2019 Update - Commercial Video Recorder
At ISC West 2019 (IPVM Full Report), Alarm.com showed a new "Commercial SVR" 16 channel NVR appliance offering 2, 6 and 12TB of local storage. MSRP is $330, $475 and $790 respectively. The system will support clip recording to the cloud for alarm events. They also said they are offering their "AI" video analytics (IPVM Test) for all commercial cameras. There will be a new commercial video service pricing plan, but they were not disclosing pricing at the show.
Additionally, they said they are increasing marketing in 2019 for multi-family, wellness/heathcare, and home builder verticals, and said they have not typically sold well in those markets.
Create New Topic