Powerhouse ADT Security Services Offers Wide Range of Solutions

By Nicole Zaro Stahl, Hacienda Network Staff Writer

Electronic security used to be a fairly simple matter. Sensors would detect specific incidents like an intrusion or a fire and sound an alarm or pass on an alert to a designated party - whether a security guard, the local police or fire station, or the home or business owner. Technology has totally redrawn that picture. Today, networks of interconnected devices empower a vast array of capabilities, from home automation for residential customers to process monitoring in the industrial arena.

ADT, which has maintained a sizeable office in Hacienda for six years, is the world's largest single provider of electronic security services. This past January, its parent, Tyco International, purchased Broadview Security, formerly Brink's Home Security. Almost seven million residential, commercial, and government customers throughout North America now take advantage of ADT's wide range of security solutions, which include intrusion and fire detection, video surveillance, access control, critical condition monitoring, health and elder care monitoring, electronic article surveillance, radio frequency identification, and integrated systems.

"We help protect 90 percent of the Fortune 500 companies, half of the country's leading banks and busiest airports, more than 15,000 schools and colleges, and all federal courthouses nationwide," comments Keith Brown, Operations Support Manager of the Hacienda branch. Added to this quick overview of ADT's customer base are a host of applications that help businesses run more efficiently - for instance, cameras that record traffic at drive-through windows so restaurants can staff up for the busiest times, systems that record the performance of industrial procedures to document regulatory compliance, or temperature control monitoring to ensure the integrity of refrigerated products.

The 136-year old company, headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, has a roster of 26,000 employees who work from 350 different sites across the United States and Canada. Eight of those locations are mammoth-sized, 24/7 customer monitoring centers, fully redundant so that if, for example, a hurricane knocks out power in one geographic area, all signals can be rerouted to another center without missing a beat.

Dedicated to sales and service, the Pleasanton facility, at 4511 Willow Road, houses 170 people in roughly 28,000 square feet. Brown remarks, "We have a little of everything, except monitoring and billing - commercial, small business, and residential sales; installation; repair service; a national accounts group that includes the Sensormatic anti-theft tags used in retail; and representatives from corporate on the director level."

Hacienda's location at the junction of two major freeways is especially convenient, he points out. "Our trucks can leave this building and be in San Jose in 20 minutes or San Francisco in less than an hour, so it is really central to the bulk of our territory," which stretches south and west to Soledad and Monterey and north and east to Napa and Brentwood.

Residential business has been robust in the current economy, which has spawned heightened concern about crime, Brown observes. On the commercial side, he has found that some larger projects are on hold "until companies determine what the economy will do," but the additional strength of the Broadview acquisition "should present more opportunities for us," he reports.

For more information, visit www.adt.com.

Photo: Darrel Matthews, left, and Keith Brown head up ADT's offices in Hacienda.

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