George West conducted interviews of industry leaders. These were published in the WTRS Newsletter on a regular basis.
| Raoul Wijgergangs – VP U.S. Business Development at Zensys & Steve Troyer – VP Marketing at Zensys 1. Can you tell us a bit about your background? Raoul: Before I joined Zensys almost 2 years ago, my background was at Philips Electronics where I’ve been for the last 5 years of my career within Philips very much involved in the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technology side, developing those into very large propositions of Philips Electronics including the joint venture which Philips closed with Acton of Taiwan (Arcadian). My background is focused on knowing how to build standards in the wireless connectivity field. Steve: I am originally from the Chicago area and graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts and UC Berkeley where I earned an MBA. I have been involved in the networking industry for most of my career having worked for leading companies including Cisco, 3Com and Juniper Networks largely in product management, marketing and sales channel management positions. In my last major role at Cisco, I had the opportunity to help define Cisco’s strategy to profitably participate in the consumer home networking market, which ultimately led to the acquisition of Linksys. I was active in the integration team and also founded and the product marketing team at Linksys. The consumer networking business was very enjoyable. The technology moves fast and there are many challenges but at the end of the day it is easy to tell your parents about what you and your company’s products can do for the average person. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to lead Zensys marketing and help the next phase of growth in a similar emerging market. 2. Who is Zensys? Raoul: The company Zensys is really the face behind the Z-Wave technology. The Z-Wave technology is probably the most important part to describe here. Where Z-Wave technology basically stands for seamless interoperability for control devices that are targeted at the home space. Control devices, obviously, in applications such as lighting, security systems, access control, window coverings, smoke detectors, thermostat, climate control, and so on. There is also home control in terms of entertainment control. That is a new piece that we have been adding to our business for the last 12 to 6 months, and have been fairly successful. Also there are now remote controls available on the market, that have the Z-Wave technology in them, that allow you to control your TV while your components, your DVD player or your set top box, are hidden away in a closet or a little cabinet and you control it via Z-Wave. In that cabinet you have a Z-Wave to IR converter so you can use all the equipment that you have today. You don’t need to change anything. A very important path that I would like to underline is the migration from home controls into, now, entertainment control. Zensys’ mission really is to make Z-Wave the Wi-Fi of home control. If you see the industry momentum and following that we have, I think we are well on our way to accomplishing that goal. 3. Who are your most important OEM partners? Raoul: Companies that build light control products have always been, and will always remain very instrumental for our company. These include Leviton, Cooper, Intermatic, and ACT. They have been bringing out products as early as the summer of 2003 and and have been good supporters of the Z-Wave technology. In addition to those, I think fairly recently what has become very important is the real retail play with Z-Wave. And there I would like to mention companies like Monster, Logitech, UEI, and Sirius Radio, that have taken the Z-Wave technology and given it the twist of entertainment control. And the piece that is very, very recent and looks incredibly promising is now to say, you have home control within the home, you have entertainment control within the home, how about utilizing these systems within your home, but now also while you are away. This ties into the piece with Cisco/Linksys coming into the picture.4. What can you tell us about the Cisco investment in Zensys? Raoul: First of all, it is extremely exciting news for the Z-Wave community to see involvement, again, of a prestigious company like Cisco investing into Zensys, and therefore the Z-Wave technology. If you look at where in the Cisco corporation that interest is largely situated, obviously that is the Linksys group. Linksys is obviously extremely well positioned to capitalize on the fact that, hey, there are so many Z-Wave products available from within the home. Now what fantastic things can you do with these systems that are out there, over the Internet. Control over IP, as we sometimes refer to it, offers the capability of tieing together a Linksys camera with a Linksys router that is Z-Wave-enabled, and subsequently you can look at a camera to see who is there, and open a door if you are not at home. Or you can get a picture of your son or daughter coming home from school in an email at your office. You can build a somewhat home-grown security system where, when certain door sensors or window sensors get triggered, snapshots get taken by cameras. So the collaboration between IP devices and and Z-Wave devices, controlled from a distance, over the Internet now becomes possible. This is the area that we expect exciting propositions to be developed by Linksys. 5. Your partners have announced a Z-Wave to X-10 bridge, is this the type of strategy you see being expanded upon? Raoul: Yes, there is also a Z-Wave to Homelink bridge. We believe that there is not going to be one single type of network in a home. To put Wi-Fi in every single light switch doesn’t make sense. We believe that the collaboration between networks, Wi-Fi and UWB, and narrowband, such as Z-Wave, and also existing technologies that are out there, is absolutely crucial to get fast market adaptation. Because this way people don’t have to start all over again. They can use what they already have, tie that in with new products, and migrate further over time, without having to start from scratch every single time a new technology develops. The bridging strategy as part of our technology has always been very present and prevalent. That is also why you see so many of these bridging technologies out there. 6. What types of sales channels are in place today for Zensys, beyond the OEM channel, and how do you plan to develop them over time? Raoul: The key part for us is not so much only our own distribution, but our customers’ distribution. As an example, in the summer of 2003, when we started shipping the technology into products, I think it was largely done through professional installers and dealers. That is, the professional home control channel. Whereas now we are shipping the technology through our OEM partners into Home Depot and Lowes, as well as in Best Buy and Frys, and the real CE and PC retailers as well. That part of it is really important so consumers can find the proposition of Z-Wave in any single channel that they tend to go into. That is the most important part and for that reason, also, we are very excited that we have coverage from the professional channel all the way up to PC and CE retail. The other part that is really important with respect to sales channels is that it is now not only a proposition about being able to control your lights, from one spot, which is something consumers never really experienced until now. But they definitely experienced all sorts of new gadgets coming through in the entertainment arena. We are able to capitalize on that with these new remotes. People can now buy a remote without the need for line-of-sight use. With that, they get the ability now also to control lights. As an example, when the switch on their TV, certain lights start to dim. They kind of get that function for free, which is obviously very important to make the consumer education cycle a lot quicker and easier. Also there you need the collaboration between the CE and PC retail channel, hand in hand with the do-it-yourself channel or, even further, in the professional channel in order to get every single piece covered. For ourselves, we have been largely focused on the OEM channels. However we are now getting to the size that in certain geographical regions we will be expanding into distribution and rep channels as well. However, that is not as relevant as for our customers to reach the consumer. 7. Who are you working with in Europe? Raoul: In Europe we also have traction, but at large it is a market that is following the US market by probably one to two years. I think you saw that with Wi-Fi and we are definitely recognizing something similar with Z-Wave. In Europe, the light control players in home control, who are very diverse in comparison to the US, as well as the dominant climate control player, Danfoss, are on board with Z-Wave. In general, because of all the different countries, the different mechanicals, the different electricals, and the different languages, you see a lot more smaller players in home control that you see in the US. In the US, with five players you have covered probably 90% of light control. In Europe, there is something similar, but it is unique for every individual country in Europe. 8. We have concluded that despite the unification efforts in Europe, there still are a number of divergent standards and requirements on electrical equipment in the different countries. Is this something you are seeing as well? Raoul: Absolutely. Apart from the electrical part, you also have the mechanical part. A plug in England looks different than a plug in Germany or France. It is nice to try to have a European community, but obviously it is not possible to decide that “hey, today lets all have the same power plugs and everybody goes off and exchanges them”. It doesn’t work that way. I don’t think that it is every going to work that way because it would be too much of a change-over.9. Zensys is a European company, so why are you focusing on the United States? But I do think I can see that the advantage of working in a large market that has a set of unified standards across it probably really key in terms of choice of market entry. Raoul: It is more concentrated, but if you are talking about more cell phone applications, then I believe that in spite of the geographic diversification, cell phone innovations are largely led by Europe. So if you are in the business of cell phone-related matters I think you would want to do it from Europe first. Whereas I think the digital home space is opposite. It will happen in the US first and will be followed one to two years later in Europe.10. Is the issue of moving into Asia a problem you will face when it happens, or is it simply a matter of choosing another band in which to operate? Raoul: I think we are expecting the same things that happened in Wi-Fi to happen in Z-Wave as well. You will see an awful lot of Asian players being interested, and active, providing products for the US. Subsequently you see those same products appearing, sometimes in a different shell, in Asia itself. Then when there are regulatory issues, like there were in the early days of Wi-Fi in China, and 802.11a in Japan, the issues are hammered out step by step. Sometimes it involves a different frequency, sometimes it involves changing the regulatories. Usually it is a mixed bag of the two. That is also how we are recognizing today that things are happening in Asia.11. Based on your experience with the customer requirements in this space, how do you think end users will adopt these new Z-Wave wireless technologies? what are some of the emerging applications you are seeing? Raoul: The emerging applications are very much centered around entertainment control where the Z-Wave network is used to switch on your TV and subsequently dim you lights, so you don’t have the nasty reflection anymore. Also network storage devices, such as those which hold your music, being controlled from a handheld remote in a different room. Those are very important new applications of Z-Wave that are developing very quickly, for example with Sirius Radio. The reinforcement of entertainment control with home control is extremely, extremely strong. We see this as one of the key elements to bringing Z-Wave adaptation to the next level.12. We have heard that a possible expansion market for Zensys and Z-Wave would be into the small and medium business market space, such as the small office or branch office. Is there are long-term plan to explore this marketplace, or is that something that is not in your scope today? Raoul: We have always been focused on residential markets. Certain of our partners are taking the same technology and applying it equally well to small and medium business environments. These include strip malls, doctor’s offices, and so on and so forth. These sorts of constructions, or dwellings don’t differ a whole lot, if at all, from a residential area. If you are talking about a manufacturing floor, or a hundred story building in Manhattan, then that is a whole different kettle of fish.13. I’m just speculating that the way to address the small and medium business market is through the professional installer? Raoul: Yes, largely that is taken care of and addressed by the professional installers.14. Can you address the criticism that Z-Wave is not a standard in the sense that its been adopted by the IEEE or some other group. Do you see that as an issue that will inhibit adoption as you move forward? Raoul: We often get that question asked. I believe there have been a whole lot more standards built without the IEEE than with it in the residential space. Obviously, we absolutely applaud the IEEE’s involvement in Wi-Fi and its efforts into making it a standard because before the IEEE’s involvement it was quite messy with the various regions following different directions. However if you look at other standards, such as DVD vs RW, to come back to Philips, there was no IEEE involvement there and these things work equally well, if not better. Perhaps sometimes even faster. We believe that standards are ultimately set by sensible applications. IEEE’s involvement in Wi-Fi was great, but I think that it sometimes gets too much credit for the success. I believe the real success of Wi-Fi was the fact that you can now wirelessly connect multiple computers, at home, through the Internet. That key and core application, I think, drove more standardization than the IEEE really did..15. If I could get technical here for a moment, the physical layer of Z-Wave is based on an FSK radio. Was there a particular reason that you chose that type of approach? Raoul: Yes, residential controls require a very aggressive drive towards low cost. If you want to do low cost, you keep things simple. And FSK radio designs are one of the simplest and lowest cost available. That is the reason we took that path. If you combine this with the choice of frequency band, you can see that taking a nice simple radio design, and looking at a nice clean spot in the frequency band of 908 MHz in the US (or 868 MHz in Europe), we are able to get very good ranges. In fact in many cases, better than you see in a high-power Wi-Fi environment. Again the choice we started with was to make something that allows for low cost designing, something that is not complex, and something that is not in the crowded space of 2.4 GHz where everybody is playing. I am very happy to see that we made the choices we made, because they are playing out incredibly well for us.16. I did have one more question. What do you see as the key to Zensys’ future success in the marketplace? Raoul: The key element that we are now facing is to have mass consumer education about what Z-Wave can offer to consumers’ lives. Fortunately we have all learned the lesson from Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, that when you try to be everything for everybody and get way too diverse in your application, you are going to have problems, such as Bluetooth did. Whereas, had very a clear consumer usage model, very clear application, created enough industry momentum behind it in the form of, in their case the Wi-Fi organization, and in our case the Z-Wave Alliance to really help drive that consumer education home.17. Finally, is there anything else you would like to tell our readers as a final note? Raoul: The thing that I would like all readers to understand is that when they are looking at this space, to make sure that they take a business look as well as a technology look before they enter the space; rather than purely a PR look. Certain companies have made mistakes when they have been focused on the PR drum of some of these other technologies. One or two years after making their choice, they have to conclude that they made the wrong choice, because they did not look at the business side and the industry momentum, nor did they look at the sensibilities of technology choices. When they do that, all of them end up with the right choice – and that is Z-Wave. More information about Z-Wave… This interview ran in our Feb. 13, 2006 newsletter West Technology Research Solutions, LLC © 2007 All Rights Reserved |