Trendy in Vegas

ISC West 2012 is now a wrap, the show having ended a few hours ago. Day 3 proved as thought provoking as the first two.

I started out today talking to Rick Robinson, president of Qualified Commercial Electronics Co. (QCECO), a fire and security company in Phoenix, Ariz. in business for 25 years.

Among the things that Robinson, who said his company is a Silent Knight dealer, talked about with me was trends. One trend he said he sees in the industry is that “the technology is consistently getting better and less expensive. I think the products we have available to us now, and that we're offering to our customers, are selling themselves so to speak because they're so good compared to the way things were 10 to 15 years ago.”

Robinson's words seem to me to sum up very well what I was seeing and hearing this past week in Las Vegas. And the show also seemed reflective of other trends.

A case in point is the home energy management trend. Consumers already are demanding ways to manage their use of energy and that demand is expected to grow phenomenally in the next decade, according to a new study.

It was clear at the show that the security industry is already anticipating that demand with a variety of products that help consumers track their energy usage to save money.

Alarm.com, a Vienna, Va.-based technology provider of interactive security solutions is among those doing that through its new Smart Schedule Activity Patterns. The feature helps homeowners optimize their thermostat settings based on data from their security systems.

Alarm.com at the show was also promoting its new location-based services, called Geo-Services.

One of those services, to be released next month, is an arming reminder alert, said Jay Kenny, Alarm.com's VP of marketing.

He said the service will make use of a homeowner's GPS device on their mobile phone to determine if they've left a “geofence” around their home without arming their system. “If I leave that fence I can get a notification [that says]'You forgot something on your system,'” Kenny told me.

He said such services all are part of a larger trend.

“The solution is really starting to be bigger than just security, more the management of these critical things in the home, [such as] energy, locks on the door, and two-way video systems,” Kenny told me. “That connected solution is something we're seeing consumer interest in, and our dealers who are adopting the approach of selling that type of solution are having a lot of success right now.”