With more than 7,000 employees and 850,000 customers, Vivint, the security and home automation company, held the grand opening of its new innovation center on Tuesday.

The Lehi-based center houses 320 employees in engineering, product development, innovation, IT, marketing and design. The building has a full-service cafeteria, fitness center, bike shop and demo home, which the company uses for product testing.

?We initially were a residential security provider,? said Todd Pedersen, Vivint CEO. ?Now we are evolving rapidly. We are now working in connected homes, smart homes, Internet of things.?

Attendess for the ceremony included Senator Orrin Hatch, Val Hale, director of the Governor?s Office of
Economic Development, John Curtis, Provo Mayor, community members and Vivint employees.

Pedersen, who kicked off the meeting, spoke about the potential Vivint has with their Innovation Center. The smart home industry is projected to be an $800 million industry by 2018 and Internet of Things is supposed to be a multi-trillion dollar industry by 2020, he said.

?We were literally the leading company in home automation, this little company from Utah, that led out way in advance of the Googles and Microsofts,? Pedersen said. ?We started moving towards smart homes and Internet of Things in 2007. People stared at us like we were crazy.?

Senator Orrin Hatch spoke about Utah?s growing technology sector and the impact it is having on the nation.

There are nearly 100,000 people working in the high-tech industry in Utah, he said.

?California may have Silicon Valley, but Utah?s Silicon Slopes continues to dominate in innovation and performance,? Senator Hatch said.

The Vivint innovation team contributes to this performance by working on projects such as developing the world?s smartest thermostat and creating web and mobile smart home experiences. The company has 31 U.S. patents, 123 pending patents, 21 pending foreign patent applications and 40 prospective patents.

?We have this audacious goal to be a company where every single consumer wants some part of what we do,? Pedersen said. ?We are crazy enough to think we can accomplish that?.