Howard launches Global Monitoring Solutions

DENHAM SPRINGS, La.—Rusty Howard decided to launch a brand new wholesale monitoring center, Global Monitoring Solutions—GMS for short—after being in the alarm business for 23 years.

“That gives us a huge advantage,” Howard told Security Systems News. “When you have an alarm company and you've been in that business, you realize that there are things that [most monitoring companies] don't understand because they're not in that world. We run GMS from an alarm-company perspective.”

In addition to GMS, which opened its doors 18 months ago in a suburb of Baton Rouge, La., Howard founded and still runs Certified Alarm Systems. The two companies are collocated here, but are two separate businesses.

GMS is a UL-listed and Five Diamond Certified central station. It currently serves 14 dealers, but it has capacity to serve many more.

“We can handle a million accounts and have the capacity to go to 25 or 30 workstations,” Howard said.

He took a year to ensure that the central was up and running at peak efficiency before beginning to take on dealers six months ago. Now he's ready to bring on more Louisiana-based dealers.

Certified Alarm Systems has 70 employees and 20,000 accounts. About 60 percent of those are residential accounts. GMS does a lot of video monitoring for Certified Alarm Systems' customers, and Howard expects dealers will be drawn to GMS because of its video monitoring capabilities.

Howard said GMS is selective in choosing dealers, “We're looking for like-minded dealers who want to grow their business and are interested in taking care of customers.” Howard said GMS will trade leads with its dealers and noted that Certified Alarm Systems signs a non-compete with all of its dealers.

Kenny Savoie, formerly with Acadian Monitoring, is a consultant to GMS. GMS “uses Dice's latest technology and central station automation and Immix for its video monitoring solutions,” he said.