Savant Announces First Builder Project for Mid-Market Linux-Based Control System

Savant announced Monday the first builder deal for its Linux-based mid-market Smart series home control system. Lennar tapped Savant for Landmark, an 1,800-unit community in Doral, Fla., with homes ranging from $750,000 to $1.5 million, said J.C. Murphy, Savant executive vice president-global sales. Home sizes in the development are 2,800-3,500 square feet, Murphy told us.

The deal with Lennar is part of an overall builder program Murphy is heading that will launch later in April, Murphy said. Details aren’t yet “nailed down,” he said, but the company is narrowing its integrator roster for the builder program to reserve it for the “key top tiers of our partner program,” he said. Savant has held three integrator summits for the program, presenting plans to dealers and getting feedback on the “right criteria” to be used to qualify dealers including training certification, years with “proficiency deploying a Savant system” and number of years in business, he said. “We're focused on making sure that the brand experience that the end customer receives is a really good one,” he said. Customer references will be part of the decision process, he said, although size of integration company will be less a factor. “We have outstanding customers in firms that employ 120 people and great integrators with four to six people,” he said. “Both can do quality work and are certified and trained."

The first phase of the Lennar Florida project includes 750 townhomes. Acoustic Architects, Miami, will install and support the systems that start at $1,599 for a package including a Smart Host housing Savant software; a controller with Linux processor and AV switching functions; and a remote control, Murphy said. Homeowners will be able to roll a Savant system into the mortgage as they would any amenity upgrade, Murphy said. After the home sale, add-ons and upgrades will be sold exclusively through the integrator, he said. Savant systems at Landmark will control entertainment, lighting and thermostats at the basic level, with upgrades to include additional zones and security cameras, he said.

While recently tapped CEO William Lynch said when he joined Savant (CED Jan 29 p1) that he planned to leverage his “consumer technology, brand and marketing skills to take a proven and established home automation technology company to the mass market,” Murphy underscored that the Smart Series is being sold exclusively through the integrator channel for “mid-market” homes. Mid-market to Savant is homes in the $500,000-$1.2 million range, which Murphy called a “tremendously underpenetrated” target market. Savant began working on the broader based series a year and a half ago, Murphy said.

Savant bills the Smart series as “much more affordable” but with the performance of the higher end Pro series product the company has offered since it entered the market. The primary difference between the two is scale, Murphy said. The Smart series offers audio and video distribution but it doesn’t support the video tiling feature included in the Pro series that enables multiple views to appear on a single display. The Pro series also has support for more robust commercial-grade HVAC systems with multizone heating and cooling zones, multifunction fans and radiant heat compared with the Wi-Fi-based HVAC control included on the Smart series, he said.

Murphy positioned the Savant Smart series as a step above the “mass market” home automation offerings from security companies such as ADT and broadband service providers such as AT&T, while at the same time conceding Savant is riding the coattails of their high-profile “marketing horsepower.” Thanks to increased visibility from larger companies entering the home control space, mid-market consumers building homes already have in mind amenities such as lighting control, security systems and temperature control, Murphy said. In five years, “home of this scale won’t even be built unless they have a centralized control infrastructure,” he said. Murphy compared home control today to central vacuum systems that were not long ago sold as upgrades but today are standard offerings. Savant’s vision is that five years from now, one of its systems is “just part of the plumbing” going into a mid-market home, and that in 10 years “you would have trouble selling your home if you didn’t have it as part of the base foundation,” he said.

Savant is competing with Control4 to reach the mid-market customer with Control4 announcing an agreement with Toll Brothers for select homes throughout the U.S. two months ago (CED Feb 5 p1). On how Savant will pitch builders on its packaged system against Control4, Murphy didn’t address Control4 directly but said a key goal for Savant is to be able to “future-proof” a home control system through its software-based platform. “Technology is changing rapidly and the best way to adapt to that change is to have a data-driven software architecture that’s at the core of what Savant does,” he said. In addition, he said, Savant offers redundancy in case of product failures, he said. “Backup capability is built into the architecture,” he said. If there’s a failure at the host processing layer, a redundant host can “pick up that traffic,” he said. Software mirroring and hardware redundancy are available as options in both the Pro and Smart series products, he said.