The home automation system (HAS) software platform is still a niche market and set to take off strongly. However, according to Jonathan Collins, author of ABI's latest competitive assessment, three specific vendors have stirred the market with their Software-as-a-Service (SaaS (News - Alert)) HAS offerings.

Judged on the basis of three vendor matrices and market share, Alarm.com, iControl and Control4 have been declared the three highest ranked vendors within the ABI assessment as all three have extended their offerings into HAS services in different ways, doing their bit to promote and popularize HAS technology.

 “The SaaS market for HAS is proving key infrastructure for an explosion of investment, interest, and adoption of home automation systems,” noted Collins.

According to the report, Alarm.com (News - Alert), a specialist in home automation that goes beyond traditional devices, nudged past iControl and Control4 by topping in the implementation and innovation categories. Creating and developing a platform flexible enough to support a wide range of clients and large deployments worked in its favor.

Hence, within the implementation category, although Alarm.com and iControl both benefited from their strong market penetration and the partnerships they’ve established, the latter allowed Alarm.com to take the lead.

Control4 did well in the third position considering that it supported SaaS offering alongside its traditional services and existing channel.

The report also noted that both Alarm.com and iControl exhibited considerable skill and innovation with their SaaS HAS offerings, providing the functionality that major rollouts have leveraged.

In contrast, Control4 chose to play a subdued role by selling individual systems to end-users and compensating by expanding its services to embrace SaaS functionality. Its motto of delivering low-cost, high-value interactive services to their customers was responsible for customer acquisition and retention.

Control4 shared second place with iControl after scoring well for its application scope and breadth.

“ They are providing support for a range of large existing connected home services companies, such as telcos, cable companies, home security firms, utilities and others to extend their offerings into HAS services- promoting and popularizing HAS technology,” observed Collins, commenting on the efforts of the three top vendors to promote HAS.