In The News — Connected Home World
Affinegy’s DigiDo to Integrate AVG Internet Security 9.0
AVG, the technology security solution provider announced that they are partnering with Affinegy to offer AVG Internet Security 9.0 on the DigiDo digital lifestyle platform. The partnership is to allow service providers to offer small businesses and home users a comprehensive and easy to use internet security solution.
On the DigiDo platform the AVG solution will offer security not only to PCs but will encompass the whole digital lifestyle. The DigiDo digital lifestyle platform was released last year as a suite of solutions.
In The News — PC World
AVG Technologies Teams Up with Affinegy for a Secure Digital Home
Affinegy’s DigiDo™ selected by Bresnan Communications for WiFi@Home Service
Affinegy, the software company that makes the Digital Lifestyle just work, today announced that Bresnan Communications has implemented the full Affinegy DigiDo™ suite to support their converged digital network.
“I believe Bresnan is delivering the optimal service experience in today’s multi-user, multi-device broadband home,” said Melissa Simpler, CEO of Affinegy. “Their WiFi@Home service centers around leading wireless-N technology, delivering the broadest range and speed performance, with no new wires. Affinegy’s DigiDo makes it truly easy to install, secure and use and the DigiDo suite allows customer care agents to support subscribers in real-time and scale their service offerings more quickly and cost effectively.”
Affinegy’s DigiDo suite allows consumers to connect multiple computers to a single, secure wireless home network by guiding users through installation with a set-up wizard. Once installation is complete, services like Bresnan’s Wifi@Home provide connectivity assurance, security profile updates, seamless add/change of home network devices and easier connections to non-home networks. Beyond management of a customer’s home network, the DigiDo platform will allow Bresnan support technicians to view the performance levels of Wifi@Home managed networks through a care portal.
“Our subscribers appreciate the elegant simplicity of our secure WiFi@Home service,” said Gus Chimos, VP, Data Products and Services at Bresnan Communications. “They appreciate being able to get their network up and running quickly, with over half of the customers who have selected WiFi@Home self-installing the service for their multi-user home most of them in just minutes.”
AVG Technologies and Affinegy Team Up to Provide First Comprehensive Security Platform for Connected Home Users
AVG Technologies, developers of the world’s most popular free anti-virus software, today announced that it has begun working with Affinegy, providers of intelligent home networking solutions to millions of broadband subscribers, to fully integrate AVG’s Internet Security 9.0 with Affinegy’s DigiDo™ Platform. Together with AVG, Affinegy will allow service providers to offer consumers the first easy-to-use and comprehensive secured Internet experience, whether at home or on-the-go.
“We are excited to work with AVG to deliver advanced, comprehensive desktop security across the connected home, while offering an easy, seamless consumer experience,” said Affinegy CEO Melissa Simpler. “As home users connect more digital devices to each other and to the Internet, this integrated offering will provide a complete solution for installing, managing, expanding and fully securing their digital lifestyle networks.”
As consumers rapidly expand their digital footprint both inside and outside the home, they become increasingly vulnerable to security breaches. The integration between the Affinegy DigiDo Platform and AVG’s Internet Security 9.0 will offer unprecedented protection against this growing threat, by providing:
- The real-time protection needed against malicious attacks that occur through seemingly harmless social networking sites and general Internet use
- A secure check of links before and during navigation with AVG Link Scanner to ensure the safety of Internet destinations
- A wireless security manager with network-wide encryption updates, smart profiles, and easy protection of the home router
- Automatically-managed, network-wide updates of home and desktop security manager, with the ability to check security settings for the whole home network and update all computers to the latest protections from any computer
- Easy-to-use, highly graphical user interfaces that intelligently guide the end user’s configuration and management of their network security and connectivity, both at home and on-the-go.
“As consumers take more of their lives online and embrace a digital lifestyle, it is increasingly important for service providers to offer complete solutions that do more than protect individual computers. Technologies must not only manage our consumers’ digital lifestyles, but also secure them,” said J.R Smith, CEO, AVG Technologies. “AVG is dedicated to ensuring a secure and smooth digital experience, and working with Affinegy will help us to extend that support to better provide for our home users and their networks.”
AVG and Affinegy will be showcasing the new integrated solution in the CableNET pavilion during this
In The News
DG surveys consumer adoption of home networks, and a conversation with Affinegy’s Art Lancaster
TDG’s Chart of the Week
Consumer Demand for Home Networks – A Follow-Up
Reprinted with permission from Michael Greeson, Founding Partner, Research, The Diffusion Group
Last Friday’s Chart of the Week generated some interesting commentary from TDG members, including our long-time friend Art Lancaster of Affinegy. He noted that the data on consumer demand for home networks did not distinguish between those that already own a home network and those that do not and that such a distinction is important when discussing this issue.
Art, you are indeed correct, so this week’s chart does just that.
Recall that adult broadband users were asked to answer the following question:
“Assuming the price is reasonable, how likely are you to purchase a home network in the next six months?”
The way the question was worded, both network owners and non-owners perceived the question as applying to them (“new” means one thing to an owner and something else to to a non-owner, but both meanings are appropriate for their respective audiences).
As noted in the graphic, only 9.5% of network owners are to varying degrees likely to purchase a new home network in the next six months, compared with 14.1% of non-owners. Though demand may be lower among current network owners than non-owners (which is hardly surprising), this does not change the fact that it is poor among both segments.
Art also pointed out that poor consumer demand does not necessarily mean that operator push is not sufficiently significant to keep this market going. He points to the classic distinction between (a) consumer demand that manifests itself via retail purchases (pull), and (b) operator deployments of home networks in support of related services (push).
Back in 2004, we first began discussing that this shift from push to pull was not only inevitable but that prudent OEMs would be prepared for it by developing strong operator relationships. Companies like NETGEAR and Linksys heeded these predictions and today find themselves the beneficiary of significant, lucrative operator sales.
Home network diffusion in the U.S. is indeed becoming an operator-driven push market, and this means new opportunities for companies serving these operators. Nonetheless, total in-home network diffusion (a combination of both push and pull) appears to be stalling at around 40% of broadband households. How could this be happening if operators are in fact deploying millions of new home networks?
Good question. Perhaps this means that most new operator deployments are within homes that already have a network in place. For example, while living in Dallas, I signed up for AT&T’s Uverse IPTV offering, which required the operator to deploy a new 2-Wire gateway. I already had a 2-Wire network in place, so in reality the operator gateway simply replaced a gateway I had previously purchased.
Then again, maybe consumers that use such IPTV services are not aware that they have a home network in place. At this point, we do not have data to determine if this is true. Rest assured that it will be addressed in our upcoming Benchmarking the Connected Consumer primary research project.
Regardless of the precise reason, I strongly believe that aggressive consumer education as to the benefits of in-home networks is warranted. The industry cannot simply rely on the non-network-owning population being aware of these benefits. Yes, it is wonderful that operators are pushing more home networks into consumer homes in support of services such as IPTV. But to the extent these networks are deployed in non-networked households, these consumers are unlikely to have any idea how to use a home network for non-operator-dependent services and applications…something the consumer technology industry can ill afford to happen.
If you have comments or questions about this Chart of the Week, please contact me at mg@tdgresearch.com .
..and Art, thanks for the feedback and continued discussion.