A brief history of Savant
Back in 2003, a man named Bob from New York connected his iTunes account with to multiroom audio system.
“This was long before the iPhone, iPad or Apple TV,” he says.
“It was even before Apple sold movies, but at that time the bread and butter of the home automation industry was lighting control and multi-room audio. So I focused on audio and decided to build a system that incorporated iTunes.”
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And with that, Savant was born. In the country for the first Australian dealer conference, which took place at the Novotel Twin Waters Resort on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast in March, Savant’s co-founders Bob Madonna and Jim Carroll took some time to discuss with me the state of the control system industry and the Apple-isation of home automation.
“Bob and I founded the business together seven years ago as there were a lot of things that we wanted to fix in the industry. We are really focused on changing it, how it fundamentally works, and we’re fully committed to achieving that,” says Jim.
“It’s not something you can do half-heartedly. We understand our responsibility and what control systems mean to a dealer’s business. Control systems are the only product category that fundamentally drives the success of your business. We accept that responsibility and, as much as we like to have fun, we take that responsibility very seriously.
“The legacy control business is a bit like undertaking: you find customers, service them, put them in the ground and then pray that you never hear from them again. If you ever have to go back and touch legacy code after a year or so, it’s an absolute nightmare.”
That’s why an Apple infrastructure was used to build their system.
“When we decided to start Savant we had to pick a platform to write the code on, and coming from telecommunications there was only one choice – Unix,” Bob explains.
“Unix-based systems are the most reliable on the planet. It was developed by Bell Labs and is in every central office telephone exchange in the world. So we could build our own Unix system from scratch, use Linux or Apple OSX.”
Today, Savant is the only 100% Applebased automation system on the market.
“One thing I looked at when I started this company was how customer satisfaction was terrible in this industry. When I bought a legacy system for my home, a neighbour who had a similar system said he never used it because it was too complicated. This isn’t true anymore.”
Several years ago, Savant made its own touch panel interfaces but on the day the iPad was released, the company killed that entire product line.
“It didn’t make sense anymore,” Bob says.
“What’s amazing is that we were the only company that did that. All of our competitors are still trying to sell $3,000 touch panels over a $500 iPad. But the world has changed. What Apple has done for us through the iPad is teach hundreds of millions of people how to use a touch interface. That’s hundreds of millions of potential clients.”
To date, Apple has sold 315 million iOS devices globally, including 72 million iPhones and 40 million iPads. 25 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store.
“Apple is hotter than hell and we capitalise on that,” Bob says.
“When the iPad was launched, we saw the future. I’m baffled that our competition hasn’t embraced it as much as we have. We embrace completely the new world the iPad has brought about because we saw that it was of huge benefit to the installer the end user and to the reliability of the systems,” Bob says.
“The iPad was a turning point for the whole industry, not just us. Everyone is taking advantage of it. It’s changed the industry completely but I think we have an edge on others because of our Apple expertise.
“A lot of suppliers offer apps, but we take advantage of the ‘guts’ of the Apple operating system, which makes it easier for dealers to do things like customise workflows.”
Jim adds: “We actually have engineers on staff that program our systems in the same native language that Apple itself uses to develop products and code. So that means we can leverage the swiping, the pinching, the zoom – all the other Apple-esque iOS features people have become familiar with.”
“Apple has trained hundreds of millions of people in how to use their human/machine interface. And we can leverage that. Nowadays, home owners don’t need to be trained how to use their house anymore. If they understand the iOS environment, they know how to use our system.”
International markets, including Australia, equate to 20% of Savant’s total revenue, a number that Bob would like to see grow. So much so, in fact, that the company has recently entered the Indian and French markets, as well as Israel, Brazil, Russia and Mexico.
“In order to change the control industry, you can’t just do it in the United States. We have to do it around the world,” Bob says.
In 2011, the number of Savant units shipped grew by 250% but trouble tickets to its technical support department only grew by 20%. In March, the company significantly expanded its product set through the acquisition of lighting control system manufacturer LiteTouch. The acquisition provides Savant with a new lighting control platform as well as a broad range of keypad offerings.
“Our sales channel has been asking for a lineup of lighting control and integrated keypad products from Savant that operate in concert with Apple iOS devices to manage and control a vast array of connected home and commercial technologies. By leveraging LiteTouch’s three decades of lighting control success coupled with Savant’s TrueImage interface, users will now have access to a powerful automation, lighting and media control platform.”
Bob says Savant’s product development is largely the result of feedback generated from events like this one.
“After every dealer conference we collect data from our dealers and roll it back into our product development. Throughout the history of Savant, we can say that we’ve never gotten it right alone. We only get things right when we listen to our partners out in the field who talk to end users, who pay for the equipment.
“We can’t do this on our own. We need a group of high quality dealers as well as relationships with some of the best companies in the industry. We have to ensure that not only is the Savant product solid, but our relationship and interfaces with all the other products you install are as well. This combination gives us a lot of solutions to bring to the market, right across the residential and commercial markets.”
And the company is by no means resting on its laurels. Anticipated to be released later in 2012 is a totally redesigned user interface. The company is also working on solutions incorporating Siri and AirPlay integration.
“Ultimately, control systems lead the decision making process for end users. That really strengthens our product line for everybody. Whether it is keypads or a full-blown lighting system, Savant should be the envy of every solution out there.”
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