Essence announced that its WeR@Home^™ technology has been integrated with the Google Assistant, allowing WeR@Home customers to use the Google Assistant on their phone; voice-activated speaker, like Google Home; and more to operate their Essence-based IoT solutions.

Essence WeR@Home Smart Living enables consumers to enjoy IoT’s possibilities through seamlessly and remotely managing their connected homes.

The comprehensive Security, Safety and Smart Home solution is easy-to-install and simple to use and leverages IoT and M2M communication technologies to deliver a complete connected-home experience.

Essence is one of the first Israeli OEM’s to integrate a smart home solution with the Google Assistant. Essence has been a home security platform provider for more than 20 years —IoT before the term existed— delivering highly secure, easy to control and manage, and beautifully designed safety, security, and home management systems.

Essence brings significant added value to the table, as it offers end-to-end solutions, from complete connectivity with service providers’ business and support infrastructures to a comprehensive platform on the customer side supporting API and local integration with Nest, IFTTT, Yale Lock, August Lock, and hundreds of other Z-Wave compatible devices.

“The integration of the Essence WeR@Home platform with the Google Assistant gives users even more choice when looking to create a connected smart home experience,” says Mark Spates, Product Lead for Smart Home at Google. “We’re looking forward to working together and bringing Essence technology to even more homes via the Google Assistant.”

With the Google Assistant, consumers can control their home environments simply with voice commands, such as: “Hey, Google, turn on my lights.” A fully ntegrated WeR@Home connected home experience can be achieved by controlling IoT devices or setting automatic event driven actions, supplemented by real-time voice commands, such as controlling lighting and smart switches and setting automation scenarios.

Hundreds of visitors to Essence’s booth at CES 2018 in Las Vegas were able to get a taste of the voice-activated future by trying the new Google Assistant capabilities live, activating a remote demo room from the show floor and seeing immediate results.

“Working with Essence gives Google Assistant customers the ability to use voice commands to control many aspects of their homes’ security, safety, and automation,” said Ronnie Nir, Essence VP Sales & Marketing. “This is the first step in reducing our reliance on apps, with voice control ultimately being the main way we manage the multitude of IoT devices within our environments.”

The combination of the Google Assistant and Essence opens significant business opportunities for service providers looking to differentiate their offerings, allowing them to deliver a connected-home system that can be managed by voice or apps on any screen from any location.

Service providers using Essence’s cloud platform can keep customers engaged 24/7 with advanced tools to remotely assist their customers, provide software upgrades, and deliver professional security services.

“Ultimately, the business of connected living is to offer technologies that let service providers deliver exceptional customer experience,” continued Nir. “The combination of the Google Assistant with Essence gives our integrators and distributors an advantage in the market.”

Essence is a global provider of IoT connected-living solutions for communication, security and healthcare service providers, serving households and small-medium businesses.