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Nest has a new home at Google – and a new boss.
Employees were informed Tuesday that Marwan Fawaz is leaving his position as CEO of Nest Labs and that the smart thermostats maker will now be associated with the Google Home unit
The change, reported for the first time by CNET, comes five months after Nest's reinstatement with the research giant. In February, Nest was integrated with Google's Hardware division to leverage the company's AI and AI capabilities and begin developing co-development products. Nest has been a subsidiary of Alphabet. The merger with Google's home appliance unit this week should enhance collaboration between the two companies, as the Nest team is seeking to accelerate the growth of its hardware, software and services offerings.
With the departure of Fawaz, the Nest unit will report to Rishi Chandra, vice president of product management for the home and salon products of Google, and a veteran of the company for 12 years
role that employees have complained of a lack of leadership and Nest has struggled to retain talent. He will continue to advise Google and Alphabet. No other leadership changes or layoffs have been announced this week. On the other hand, Google seems to want to relaunch the Nest group. And for now, the Nest brand remains.
"We are accelerating the merger of our Home and Nest teams to deliver even better services to our users and businesses under the leadership of Rishi Chandra," said Rick Osterloh, Google's vice president of hardware, in the statement. Tuesday.
Nest was co-founded in 2010 by technology luminist Tony Fadell, creator of the iPod. In 2014, Nest bought by Google for $ 3.2 billion. Fawaz, who was selected by the Alphabet Board of Directors, assumed responsibility when Fadell left in 2016. The other co-founder of Nest, Matt Rogers, left the company. company in February after being joined by Google.
Several unidentified sources told CNET that Nest employees had been asking for a new CEO for some time, citing complaints that Fawaz was more of a director of operations than an inspired leader. One source said that he was so focused on operations that the team delivered "mediocre products on time" rather than smart solutions that made "big leaps forward."
Osterloh rejected unfulfilled comments that question Fawaz's capabilities. Fawaz was "a strong CEO with a track record of operational excellence," adding that "the retention and satisfaction of Nest employees have improved dramatically over time with the team." Osterloh and Fawaz worked together at Motorola. : DERMS
Last month, GTM spoke with Jeff Hamel, Head of Energy Partnerships at Nest, to discuss the reinstatement of the division with Google, whose main goal, said Hamel, is that the Nest's mandate is expanded
. We were just Nest, we were obviously just chartered with Nest's hardware, "he said, referring to the company's connected web thermostats, to smoke detectors and security cameras. As we are now Google Wholesale, we have all Nest hardware, of course, and energy services, but now we bring Google Home and Google Assistant, and we try to bring voice [control] to public services , and all that is best.
Hamel said that Nest's team took care of everything from developing the market to developing business and developing new products. Several Nest employees are also heavily engaged in "resource manual" processes, he said, which are used to calculate the value of energy savings that their technology provides, so that Nest can establish the discounts that customers receive to reduce their energy consumption. The next task is to put the delivery back in the hands of customers so that they can enjoy it. This part requires "aggressive" work with Nest's distribution partners, said Hamel, including Home Depot, Best Buy and Lowe's. Nest is also working with partners such as Simple Energy and CLEAResult to enable instant discounts.
Hamel says Nest is also doing a lot more work with Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS) vendors including EnergyHub, Tendril and AutoGrid.
A DERMS is a software platform designed to enhance the integration of distributed solar energy, energy storage, response to demand and other energy resources on the network, and to control and aggregate these resources for the benefit of the network. According to GTM Research, a true enterprise DERMS platform – which goes beyond a pilot project and does not have the fragmentation of multi-vendor integrations – does not exist today. # 39; hui. As a result, GTM Research's North American DERMS market forecasts are relatively disappointing (with more than $ 380 million in cumulative expenses expected by 2021.)
Despite these prospects, Hamel says that it's not the case. he is optimistic for DERMS and aggregating distributed energy resources to serve Needs. As the world of connected products proliferates, "I think business opportunities are getting stronger," he said.
In the last two years, Nest has discontinued ad hoc programs with utilities. participate in much larger programs linking smart thermostats to rooftop solar energy, electric vehicles and residential energy storage. Nest thermostats are just one of the many features of this ecosystem, but the company has played an inordinate role in setting up these programs, with DERMS providers and utilities.
"We do a lot of things behind the scenes to help accelerate the market, working with many different partners," Hamel said. At last count, Nest worked with about 50 external partners and aligned "very aggressively" to support them.
From the point of view of utilities, the operation of DERs can help the network, reducing the pressure on an overstressed substation, for example. A DER solution run by utilities also allows these century-old companies to bring new products and personalized services to their customers. Everything seems good in theory. But, again, these types of applications remain very limited at the moment (as we discussed in a grid-border roundtable this week, available to GTM Squared subscribers.) [19659019] Voice control and service to low-income customers
area of primary interest for Nest to go from the front. And it's an area where Nest's integration with Google's home appliances group could really benefit the business.
In January, Nest launched a voice control service with Reliant as part of the Texas Retailer's Speak & Save 24 plan. The plan offers customers 24 months of price guarantee on their electricity bill, plus a Nest E thermostat and a Google Home smart speaker that allow customers to use voice commands to control their power consumption. # 39; energy.
Subsequently, Commonwealth Edison launched a program that allows customers to report a failure or check their bill through the Google Assistant.
While entering a new territory, Nest continues to run its Rewards Hour program, its traditional residential demand response service. The company is also advancing its Power Power project to move 1 million new Thermostat Thermostats – a newer, cheaper, smart thermostat – into low- and modest-income households, who spend a disproportionate share of their income. to energy. Nest has partnered with Habitat for Humanity, so every new home built this year will benefit from a thermostat. E. Nest is also working with Fannie Mae on a low-income population. According to George Hamel, […] the technology implemented in these low- and modest-income households could be integrated into an energy service offering. If Nest successfully deploys 1 million units, this could be a significant opportunity.
Overall, it's a great list of things to do in a moment of internal turmoil. Google is also facing growing competition from Amazon through the smart home space.
For Hamel, at least, there seems to be concentration and momentum to bring some of the most advanced smart apps from Google and Nest to life. We still have a lot of work to do to make sure these [products and services] are convincing, "he said. "We want to make sure that they are attractive and that people use them and derive value from them – and that this is not just technology for the love of technology."
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