The Future of Our Industry

I was speaking with a friend in the industry tonight and discussing the future of our industry. I am a firm believer in our industry and feel we have much more to offer than "smart homes" or super A/V systems. I sit on the CEA's TechHome Division Board and have made my opinion known, that we need to not only expand into some emerging markets, but begin to shape them from the start.

In my opinion a "systems integrator" can and should be able to integrate anything into any system, and we have been for years. This would help broaden our industry into at least 3-4 more highly lucrative areas. Green or energy efficiency, Home Health Care, Building Management Systems and more. Let me explain.

I have voiced this opinion over the years and feel now is the time, we as an industry, need to come together and steer ourselves into the next iteration of existance. I have long stated that we are systems integrators, meaning we integrate systems - make things that don't normally talk together and work together work with eachother, without limitation. This doesn't have to be audio/video related. We've been doing A/V, lights, hvac, pools, networks, phone systems, sound and more for decades at least. We can make lights work off of photo sensors, we can make shutters close when the wind speed is above 30mph, we can do all kinds of things, but I think we may be missing our calling if we don't look at the bigger picture.

Since 2007 I have been saying our industry should be positioning itself for the upcoming energy efficiency or "Green" movement that is now upon us. If an integrator is doing home systems they currently control or can control almost all of the systems of a home that take electricity to power, therefore we can control how often and how much these devices or systems are used. We are ready to GREEN. My company has offered this for years. We try to off-set our imprint on a homes electrical cost, how much our rack of equipment consumes, with at least saving that much in energy on a monthly basis. So say our equipment consumes 20Kwh per month, then we would set the system to adjust lights and HVAC to save at least that much per month and usually more. In our typical clients home, we are able to save 15-20% on electric bills simply by adjusting what lights are on, when and lowering the dim level of these lights when on. In addition, we can very easily adjust the HVAC to not come on when no one is home, saving a great deal more. Thus, we are in the energy management business.

We have now designed our own in-house BMS (Building Management System) which can control almost any aspect of a building from access control and security to A/V, lights and hvac. Furthermore it ties all of these systems together which creates an extremely efficient, controllable and easy to use and maintain system to control a building's energy consumption, among other things. We looked at some existing BMS systems which focused mainly on HVAC systems and had little to do with actually managing a building, so we looked at what we could offer, based on the various systems we've installed in the past. It worked out to be relatively easy to create, easy to install, retrofittable and 2 years into it, profitable. Hence, we are in the BMS business.

Finally, well, not finally, but on todays list (as there are, I am sure, a plethura of other ideas, products and things that we can integrate and control), we can look at the emerging Home Health Care market. First off, this is an emerging and fast growing industry and demographic. Baby boomers will make up the first of those starting to utilize some sort of home health care system. Ideas I have seen working or those I have heard discussed range from systems to remind someone to take thier pills each day, to toilets that analyze your urine to systems that monitor your health via sensors on your body that read back to Bluetooth or other receivers. Our industry is based on reading information from sensors and other input devices, then formatting that information for easy review or to send on to someone else. This is simply a different application of things we've been doing for, again, decades. So, various sensors are placed in the house, on the person, etc, and this information feeds back to receivers around the house, which then formats that data to send on to a doctor or remind the owner to do something. That's home health care in a nutshell. There are a ton of additional ideas and active models for this including home health monitoring, communicating the data collected to the appropriate facility (Dr, Hospital, EMR, etc.). As you can see, our industry is better positioned than any other to meet the many technical needs these systems will require.

I think it is time we actively and aggresively stear this industry into its next phase of growth and not stifle our members growth by self limiting simply by waiting idly by, while things happen around us. We've had great success at being proactive in guiding our industry for the past 15 years or so and our focus has tightened as the industry required. Now it's time to think outside the box, look at what is evolving around us and immerse ourselves into learning to integrate these new sub-systems and products and for our manufacturers to begin producing products that help our integrators and industry not only enter these new markets, but begin to dominate them.

I feel American ingenuity is alive and well, but it is time for us to re-establish our technological prowess and lead the world in these emerging areas. The alternative could be we are watching someone else dominate any one of these huge markets, which is probably not a good thing. Energy and Health, think about it.