The end goal is to enhance the existing products and make them more intelligent and help the customer reduce false alarms and bring their total security experience to the next level. But Inder Reddy, Honeywell Security and Fire, says there are actually two schools of thought on where monitoring may be headed. “Some customers have absolutely said ‘We want to leverage our expertise so we are going to get out of the monitoring business and focus on customer service. ’ But as software becomes more and more the way to do things, you could make the case that SaaS types of services are much more scalable and you don’t need to be so large to have economies of scale. For the moment it seems that a lot of active central stations are looking to outsource to wholesale and reapply that cash to grow their RMR business. ”Pam Petrow, Vector Security, also senses change in the wind. “Consumers’ willingness to take on responsibility for some aspects of monitoring will continue to change the industry. Whether it is a DIY with 100 percent self monitoring, or some subset of events the customer self monitors, this will impact the next evolution of monitoring. In addition, the way the monitoring centers communicate with the consumer is evolving … to be more responsive to consumers, communicating with them via the venues they prefer — this relates to alarm response, service requests, billing payment options, and even sales. ”Staying current is top of mind for most manufacturers, but with so much outside of the industry competition, it is even more critical for residential security manufacturers and their dealers. “That is what guides our product development going forward,” NAPCO's Jorge Hevia says.