Oliver integrates hardware products in its SHaaS platform including lighting, security, doorbell, thermostat, and smart speakers. “All the basic systems in your house can work together to make your life better whether you want security, comfort, energy savings, or convenience,” explains Eric Smith, Co-founder and CTO of the company.
Partnering with national and global service providers, OliverIQ aims to scale their SHaaS platform rapidly, offering comprehensive product support, unlimited online and phone support, in-home assistance, and security system monitoring. This model makes OliverIQ’s SHaaS platform the first-of-its-kind solution that simplifies smart home device interoperability for the consumer. By uniting various connected devices through the OliverIQ software which will be embedded either in common household devices such as routers, set top boxes, or the OliverIQ hub, along with a single, easy-to-use application backed by round-the-clock technical support, OliverIQ will bring a reimagined and completely accessible smart home to the market.
“Until now, no one company has been able to integrate and support the entire spectrum of smart home devices. OliverIQ helps its partners fill the gaps, becoming full-service home automation heroes in the eyes of their customers,” said Will West, Co-Founder and CEO of OliverIQ.
No stranger to smart home automation, West founded and co-founded a number of successful companies over the last two decades, including PHAST, which he and OliverIQ Founder Eric Smith founded in 1995. PHAST is broadly recognized as having developed the first home control system with an intuitive interface for programming and daily use.
In 1998, West and Smith co-founded iBAHN (then called STSN), an early Utah tech company that offered broadband services for business travelers in thousands of hotels worldwide.
In 2003, the pair co-founded Control4, which became the first company to make whole-home automation a practical option for any residence, providing one-touch control of both new and existing electronic systems. Glen Mella served as President and COO of Control4 and has joined the OliverIQ team as Chief Revenue Officer.
Smith showed OliverIQ to TechBuzz and described it as an app to control everything in a home—”a single app to rule them all, so to speak.”
He added, “What’s also cool about our platform is that by default we show you all the devices in your system based on what you have in your home, and how it can play it. It can then recommend what we call ‘experiences,’ or use-cases of the platform that can automate and control a home to optimize for energy savings, security, protection from water damage and a long list of other cases. For example, at sunrise and sunset, Smith said, “our app can turn your porch lights on when the sun sets and off when it sunrises.”
Smith demonstrated how the app can reduce energy costs by using timers, sensors, beacons (like a smartwatch), or even wifi disturbances to detect if someone is in a room and turn on and off lights accordingly, such as a pantry or basement, after a person has left it. Among other things, one use case that resonated with TechBuzz especially is the app’s ability to incorporate water sensors and a water valve to automatically turn off a home’s water should a pipe burst and cause flooding—a most dreaded problem, especially if no one is at home to deal with it.
OliverIQ’s business model is B2B; it partners with national and global service providers that work directly with consumer that will be announced in the coming weeks. “Our model here is that our partners would be offering this to their consumers, added Mella, building on his previous experience at smart home automation with Smith and West. “Its the platform that they’re going to use, both for the consumer’s experience as well as to provide remote monitoring and support.”
Building on the lessoned learned from their experience in home automation, the OliverIQ team have identified three options consumers have for constructing a smart home:
Hire a professional integrator to create a custom system, with costs starting in the mid-5 figures.
Install a home security system that can integrate with a limited selection of other connected devices—more smart access than smart home.”
Pour endless hours into building it yourself out of an ever-growing assortment of DIY connected devices.
The DIY smart home sector is both the largest and the most troubled, according to the Oliver team. Consumers are overwhelmed with the sheer number of connected devices in their homes, each requiring its own distinct application for management. Managing DIY connected devices individually is annoying. Getting them to work together is nearly impossible. And, even if a consumer manages the impossible, something breaks.
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, OliverIQ announced the official
