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briefs www.securitysystemsnews.com March 2017 SE c U r ITY SYSTEMS NEWS Monitoring 24 Connect America acquires again: Mass.- based Be Safer at Home BALA CYNWYD, Pa.—Connect America, a large PERS provider, recently acquired Be Safer At Home Inc., a PERS company based in Woburn, Mass. "For many years, Be Safer At Home has built a reputation in the PERS indus- try on treating customers with dignity and respect," Richard Brooks, Healthcare Division president for Connect America, said in a prepared statement. "Acquiring a well-regarded company like Be Safer at Home allows us to expand our sales reach, while bringing additional and much-awaited products and services to customers and caregivers throughout New England." Be Safer At Home will operate from its current location, maintain its existing staff of dedicated employees and offer addi- tional products and services to its sub- scribers and agencies, Connect America said. "Connect America will continue to seek out opportunities to expand our portfolio because they help to solidify our position as an industry leader and allow us to build on the reputation and refer- ral network of the companies that we acquire," Brooks added. New report covers global alarm monitoring market DUBLIN—Research and Markets announced the addition of the "World Alarm Monitoring Market - Opportunities and Forecasts, 2014 - 2022" report to its offering. Increase in crime rate and insurance policies with installed security systems are propelling the growth of the world alarm monitoring market, according to the announcement. In addition, high adoption rate of home automation systems supple- ments the growth. However, high cost of installation and maintenance of alarm monitoring systems is obstructing the growth of the market. Handheld devices- based security systems is expected to create opportunities in the market. The world alarm monitoring market is segmented based on communication technology, input signal, components, end users, and geography. The com- munication technologies covered in the report are wired telecommunication net- work, IP network, and others. On the basis of input signal, the market is further classified into analog signal, discrete sig- nal, and protocol signal. The components discussed in the report are remote termi- nal unit, alarm sensors, motion detection sensor, central monitoring receivers, and communication networks & gateways. The end users covered in the report are vehicle alarm monitoring, building alarm monitoring, and others. Geographically, the market is divided into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America, Middle East and Africa (LAMEA). By Spencer Ives COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.— ManitouNEO, Bold Technology's latest version of its central station automation platform, is com- mercially available as of Feb. 1. Rod Coles, Bold's CEO, called ManitouNEO "the first major re-architecture of the software. … This is version two." Bold Technologies released its first version of Manitou in 2003, 14 years ago, and Coles expects this version to hold up just as long. Bold has about 600 customers using Manitou; the upgrade is free for current Manitou customers. ManitouNEO will be browser- based, and feature a new user interface. "The reason that we've chosen a browser-based applica- tion means that it's portable," Coles told Security Systems News. The software can now run Windows, Linux, Mac and even on a phone or tablet, he continued. "With ManitouNEO, we can use exactly the same application for dealers as well as central sta- tion staff. It's just permissions based," Coles said. This makes Bold's maintenance and dealer support easier, according to Coles. ManitouNEO is starting out with options for both a new user interface and Manitou's existing interface. This allows companies ONKÖL begins production By Spencer Ives MILWAUKEE—ONKÖL aims to unify a variety of home technolo- gies in one unit and is officially rolling out its products in early January. "The ability for us to do connect health and connected home out of one unit is basically a huge advantage for us," Marc Cayle, founder of ONKÖL, told Security Systems News. The sys- tem connects to home health technologies, such as blood pressure cuffs or PERS devices, as well as smoke detectors, CO2 detectors, door and window sensors, pressure mats, motion sensors. Prior to founding ONKÖL, Cayle gained experience in the aging-in-place market owning three in-home care agencies. ONKÖL got funded in February 2013, according to Cayle. The system "has to be simple and easy. To make it simple and easy took 4 years of R&D; and software engineering and there's a lot that went into it." "It's really through feet on the street expe- rience that this was developed," Cayle said. ONKÖL has been field- testing the unit. "We had about 50 units in the field for over a year, everywhere from individuals in their homes to individuals in senior facilities," Cayle said. "Call centers were testing them and in-home agen- cies were testing them." Cayle described the require- ments he gained through feed- back: "It had to be beautiful; because people didn't want an ugly emergency hub in their house that screamed that they were sick and frail," he said. The housing of the system is part- ly made out of wood to aide the resonance and clarity of the speaker. "It had to be really sim- ple, which is why—liter- ally—there is one button on the front that you interact with based on events and that's it," Cayle said. The button will change colors and functionality in coordi- nation with different events, such as when pairing new peripheral devices, canceling panic alarms or for timed medication reminders. The system also needed an open architecture "so that any peripheral, whether it's health or home, could connect to i t e a s i l y, " cellular for easy install a n d d r o p - ship delivery, and remotely configurable, he continued. The system's cellular capa- b i l i t y a l s o allows for easy firmware updates as new technologies are released. "Anyone can remotely config- ure these devices, from a phone, a tablet, or their computer, in just By Spencer Ives DALLAS—ASAPer, MONI Smart Security's latest monitor- ing offering, will allow alarm users and their emergency con- tacts to quickly communicate and determine the validity of an alarm. "We really wanted to have a central communication hub whether the customer—the subscriber—could easily com- municate with our monitoring facility, as well as communicate with their emergency con- tacts," Grant Graham, MONI's director of monitoring opera- tions, told Security Systems News. "Any device that can open a web browser will work with ASAPer." ASAPer opens a chat room that gives the user the abil- ity to inform the monitoring center if the alarm is false or an actual alarm. One button will confirm that the alarm is real and connect the customer with the monitoring center to provide additional information while another button marks the alarm as false. MONI will offer this service for free in addition to tradi- tional call verification, Graham said. The chat room will also receive updates on where the alarm is in its handling at the MONI introduces ASAPer 'chat room' and their employees to learn the new interface at their own pace, according to Coles. "We've done a lot of work to allow them to have both [user interfaces available], and they can gradually move from one to another." Many of NEO's new features are also available in the previous Windows interface. Previously, Bold had offerings in separate interfaces, such as its GPS-focused BoldTrack. "Now we've been able to pull that and other things all into one user interface. It just brings a lot of different parts of our products together," he said. Bold, in addition to the new interface, has enhanced its action patterns, which give users specific instructions and information on alarm handling. These action patterns now include more con- ditional items, Coles noted. Bold's cloud-based automa- tion platform, Manitou Cloud Services, will be upgraded to ManitouNEO as well. "This appli- cation will work within a central station, just like our existing platform does. But, of course, it's a natural fit for the cloud," Coles said. This upgrade should take place in the next few months, he said. "NEO itself will improve the upgrade process," according to Coles. SSN monitoring center, including whether a dispatch has been made or if the operator has spo- ken with one of the contacts. "In our opinion, that really delivers incredible comfort to the customer," Graham said. ASAPer was originally devel- oped through LiveWatch, a company that MONI pur- chased in February 2015. LiveWatch offers professional monitoring with DIY installed products. The company has been working to integrate it with MONI's monitoring center for about a year, Graham said. "We knew it was a powerful product because of what LiveWatch was doing with it. We knew that it could definitely add value to the services that we're already offering to our clients." Graham said that LiveWatch customers have been pleased with the service and it's one of the company's main offerings. "The primary benefit is it's an added service to our customers and, in our opinion, it's a dif- ferentiator in the marketplace compared to what other alarm companies are doing," Graham said. MONI could incorporate more modes of communication with the company in the future, he added. SSN Bold Technologies releases ManitouNEO Marc Cayle ONKÖL see page 25 ONKÖL's system features one main button on its face and wood construction for added resonance.