Drako-Brivo deal and 'the new security dealer'

There's been a lot of talk about cloud services and managed services proliferating in the security industry, but “to a large degree it has been a head fake,” according to John Mack, EVP and co-head of investment banking at Imperial Capital.

Many of the so-called cloud products are not true cloud-based systems, and managed services is in it infancy as well, Mack said.
 
He believes that the news that Dean Drako, owner of cloud-based VMS provider Eagle Eye and founder of Barracuda Networks, has purchased Brivo, the original cloud-based access control system, may help propel the emergence of a new kind of security dealer.

“These guys will be the leader,” he said.

“My guess is that we will see the evolution of a new class of dealer focused on the managed services and cloud-based model” who will do high volumes of business with small- and medium-sized businesses, Mack told me.

The combination of Brivo and Eagle Eye products (the companies will offer an integrated version of their products beginning in July) would provide a “complete solution” for dealers to sell as a managed services offering to the SMB market and multi-site location businesses, Mack said.

This new managed services security dealer would have to be more like an alarm dealer who focuses on RMR as opposed to an integrator who focuses on install revenue. They would also have to be “sales oriented guys not tech-oriented guys,” Mack said.

But, they'll have to have the technical sophistication to deal with SMB owners, he said.

This model involves high-volume work, which requires capital to subsidize the installation, larger dealers would likely have to secure a lines of credit from banks.
 
But the RMR would be much higher than the alarm model. It could be as much as a couple hundred dollars versus $40 for an alarm monitoring contract, Mack said. Importantly, the attrition rate for Brivo customers “is meaningfully lower than the 12 percent you hear about [in the residential market],” Mack said.

“It will be a great business model that can create a ton of value for dealers,” Mack said. With a lot of managed services RMR, that dealer would be an attractive acquisition target for ADT, Stanley, Protection 1, and Diebold that want to increase their presence in the SMB and multi-location business market.

Who knows, Mack surmised, the future may find a Monitronics-type business that runs a dealer program and buy accounts from security dealers who sell Eagle-Eye/Brivo-type products. “That would take bank capital- raising out of the equation.”

“A lot of positive things for dealers could spin out of this business model,” Mack said.

Imperial Capital advised Brivo in the deal.