The 2017 Connected Control System Comparison Guide offers integrators a comprehensive look at the A/NZ control system market. Paul Skelton reports.

It has been just over seven years since the last time we ran a comprehensive comparison guide to the Australian and New Zealand control system markets.

Unsurprisingly, a lot has changed.

Back in 2009 IP wasn’t a thing. Neither was voice as a user interface nor the proliferation of apps, both iOS and Android.

Further, several of the companies that we included in the last guide don’t exist anymore, having been replaced by a series of young tech start-ups that have fundamentally changed the way in which the control system market operates. The first of these, locally, was most likely Push Controls which was followed closely by the likes of CommandFusion, Fibaro, iRidium and Environexus.

That said, over the past seven years many of the large control system makers have thrived – for example, Crestron and Control4 have setup shop in the region to sell direct.

Perhaps the most surprising thing to come out of this survey was perhaps the number of companies that now sell a control system. Companies like ATEN, Vera, Simple Control and On Controls are all recent entrants to the market but have all rightly found a following among integrators.

So what have we learned from this year’s guide?

Well, not only is IP here but it’s everywhere. Every respondent apart from one – ABB – has identified their system as being built on an IP backbone. Similarly, nearly all respondents state that their offerings come with energy monitoring capabilities, which was another market that was in its infancy in 2009.

We can also see that very few companies care about smart watches (a sentiment I completely understand), the Windows operating system doesn’t get much love when it comes to app interface development, Bluetooth compatibility doesn’t get much play, and voice control functionality is present in far more solutions than you may expect.

All up, 30 companies have taken part in the survey. Others were invited but either didn’t respond or didn’t respond before we went to press. Too see the full results and to compare how each brand stacks up, have a look through the guide over the page.

We will be bringing our comparison guide back in force in 2017, so if you have a category in the market that you would like us to look at just shoot me an email.

To download a PDF of the comparison guide, click here.