Smart home and home security specialist Alarm.com said it had 5 million residential and business subscribers as of March 15, a revised figure that includes Alarm.com’s recent acquisition of Icontrol’s Connect and Piper businesses.

The deal, which closed March 8, also expands Alarm.com’s relationship with ADT, whose Pulse service is based on the Z-wave-based Connect platform. Comcast acquired the Icontrol’s ZigBee-based Converged platform. 

RELATED: Comcast, Alarm.com Divvy Up Icontrol Networks

Alarm.com will serve as “the exclusive provider of services for ADT's professionally installed residential interactive security automation and video offerings for a period of up to five years, subject to certain performance conditions and carve outs,” Steve Trundle, Alarm.com’s CEO, said Wednesday on the company’s Q4 earnings call.

RELATED: Alarm.com to Ratchet Up Pursuit of ISP, Cable Market 

He said Alarm.com has already begun to integrate Icontrol into its own operations.

Trundle also spent some time explaining how the Connect business model differs from Alarm.com’s legacy business. Connect software, he said, is deployed and operated by the service provider in their own network operations center, meaning that they are on the hook to buy their own server capacity and cellular connectivity, and to manage the deployment with their own network operations personal. Connect charges a monthly per subscriber fee for its software, as Alarm.com does. However, Alarm.com’s historic turnkey business, largely focused on thousands of channel partners, includes all of those aforementioned services in its fee.

Going forward, Alarm.com will take direction from customers if they want to put more emphasis on Alarm.com’s legacy platform or put more of it into the Connect product.

Trundle said Alarm.com is "open minded” about the Piper retail/DIY smart home business. DIY has been a “good business for us,” he said. “We are probably not as conditioned to believe that retail DIY is a great place for us to be. So we're going to look at that carefully and look at the capabilities of the product on the Piper side and see if there's a fit for that product that's more synergistic with our traditional channel strategy.”

Alarm.com posted total revenues of $69.8 million, up 23% versus the year-ago quarter. SaaS and license revenue grew 21%, to $46.9 million.

For 2017, Alarm.com expects revenues of $322 million to $325 million.

Alarm.com traditionally has focused its business on working with thousands of independent home security dealers, but the company plans to move more aggressively with a strategy centered on partnerships with cable operators and other ISPs now that it has sealed up a deal for a piece of Icontrol.

RELATED: Comcast Closes Icontrol Deal

“We think we’ll be a very relevant party for the MSO channel and the telecom channel,” Dan Kerzner, Alarm.com’s chief product officer, said.

Comcast acquired Icontrol’s ZigBee-based “Converge” platform, already used for Xfinity Home and for some smart home and security services used by several other cable operators. Alarm.com bought Icontrol’s Z-wave-facing Connect platform, which is used by home security giant ADT and a wide range of dealers. Alarm.com also bought Piper, the Ottawa, Canada-based piece of Icontrol that makes and sells a retail do-it-yourself smart home platform.

RELATED: Comcast, Alarm.com Divvy Up Icontrol Networks

Alarm.com, which works with about 6,000 dealers, had about 2.6 million properties using its service/platform at the end of 2015, and ADT’s web site currently says it has 6.5 million total customers.  Alarm.com plans to announced a revised, combined number when it reports quarterly results on Wednesday (March 15).

Alarm.com isn’t new to the MSO/ISP sector, as it does count Suddenlink (now part of Altice USA) among its known cable operator partners, but does plan to apply more resources to that market now that it has the Icontrol deal wrapped up.

RELATED: Alarm.com at Home With Suddenlink

“We're in active discussions with a variety of them [cable operators],” Kerzner said.

He and Alarm.com will have plenty of competition.

AT&T and Verizon already have their own home security and home automation products. Comcast, meanwhile, has already signaled that it will offer wholesale services to new customers in the U.S. and abroad. 

Cox Communications, Rogers Communications, and the systems formerly with Time Warner Cable and Bright House already base their respective smart home offerings on the piece of Icontrol that Comcast acquired. Among them, Rogers has already announced that, in addition to licensing X1 for a new IPTV service, it will also adopt Comcast’s new “Digital Home” product. Cox is also licensing X1 for its new Contour video service.

RELATED: Rogers Tightens Technology Ties to Comcast

Charter has not announced a formal going-forward product plan with respect to home security and home automation. Charter is still supporting TWC and Bright House customers that use the legacy platform, but said last June that it was assessing that part of its business.

The overall market is small but growing. The penetration of smart home systems will reach 3% of global households by 2018, and 7% by 2025, according to a recent forecast from IHS Markit, which also sees professionally monitored smart homes exceeding non-connected, traditionally monitored security systems in 2023.

Kerzner said Alarm.com’s acquisition will enable it to scale its platform and the R&D behind it, as it will combine development teams in Virginia, Denver, Florida and Boston, along with a presence in Silicon Valley.

According to this SEC filing, Alarm.com’s total cash consideration for its piece of Icontrol was $148.5 million.

The filing also disclosed that Alarm.com and Honeywell International had entered an agreement to settle a lawsuit filed against Alarm.com last month that tried to block the proposed deal, alleging that it violated antitrust law because the combined company would hold a 70% share of the “market for the provision of  Remote Services for dealer installed security systems.”  Terms of the settlement, which took effect after the closing of the Icontrol deal, were not disclosed. 

In a move that shakes up the home security and automation market, Comcast and Alarm.com said they have struck agreements to buy different pieces of Icontrol.

Comcast is in line to buy the Austin division that built the platform powering the MSO’s Xfinity Home service, and Alarm.com set to acquire Icontrol’s Silicon Valley and Ottawa business units, which together include a platform used today by ADT and Icontrol’s retail-focused, do-it-yourself Piper product line. Alarm.com is paying $140 million to acquire its portion of the Icontrol assets. Comcast and Icontrol did not reveal the financial terms of their agreement. 

The announcement comes about two weeks after Stacey Higginbotham reported that Icontrol was in talks to sell its assets to Comcast and Alarm.com.

Comcast, which continues to expand on its own Works with Xfinity Home initiative for third-party connected-home products such as the Nest Learning Thermostat, has been using Icontrol’s platform since it launched its home security and automation service in 2010.

“The main business we are acquiring is Icontrol’s 'Converge' software platform,” Dan Herscovici, SVP and GM of Xfinity Home, explained in this blog post about the deal. “That platform powers the Xfinity Home touch-screen panel and back-end servers, allowing them to communicate with and manage security sensors in the home, as well as supporting home-automation devices like cameras and thermostats."

In addition to Comcast, Icontrol’s platform is also being used to power similar services from  Cox Communications, Rogers Communications, and Bell Aliant. Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, recently acquired by Charter Communications, have also relied on Icontrol for their respective smart home services. Charter confirmed last week that it is reducing its focus on sales of those products as it assesses that line of business, but that it will continue to support existing customers.

“We look forward to continuing to serve customers using the Converge software platform and to growing Icontrol’s wholesale business by accelerating the development of new services and features,” Herscovici noted, adding that Comcast will continue to invest it Icontrol’s technology for Xfinity Home subs as well as “enterprise-level” Converge customers.

He added that Icontrol employees in Austin who are joining Comcast will underpin a new Comcast “engineering center of excellence”  there, and work closely with Comcast’s engineers in Philadelphia and Silicon Valley.

Meanwhile, Alarm.com, which counts Suddenlink (now part of Altice) among its customers, will snap up Icontrol’s Connect and Piper business units for $140 million, and expects to close it before the end of 2016. Connect provides security and home automation services for provides that include market-leader ADT, which has about 1.6 million subscribers. Piper, the Ottawa-based unit, makes and sells video and home automation hubs that was spawned by Icontrol’s 2014 acquisition of Blacksumac.

"This acquisition will enhance our research and development scale so that we can continue to deliver long-term value to our partners through innovative technology," Steve Trundle, president and CEO of Alarm.com, said in a statement. "We look forward to welcoming the Icontrol team and to building upon the solid relationships within their customer base." 

Raymond James acted as the financial advisor to Alarm.com on the deal. 

Alarm.com revealed Thursday that its cloud services platform is powering a home automation and security service that Suddenlink Communications rolled out last fall.

Suddenlink’s service, which starts at about $30 per month for bundled customers, features a touchscreen panel, security, and elements that enable customers to remotely control and operate thermostats, locks and lighting using apps for  iOS and Android mobile devices.

"Quality and dependability are critical to living up to the superior service we promise our customers," said Suddenlink SVP and chief marketing and sales officer Jerry Dow, in a statement.” Alarm.com's expertise helps us deliver on that promise." 

The win is notable in that Alarm.com competitor iControl has won the bulk of the home security/automation deals with large MVPDs, including Rogers Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable an. Alarm.com and iControl once duked it out in the courts over patent claims, but settled more than a year ago.

EchoStar, meanwhile, will be entering the fold in the second quarter with the retail launch of a smart home platform called Sage. EchoStar has said it's also interested in pursuing MVPD partners.

While MVPDs have been reluctant to break out home security and automation subscriber numbers, the category, also being targeted by telcos such as DirecTV, AT&T and Verizon Communications, is considered a revenue growth engine.