Hardware or Software: It Takes Both!

The access control industry has changed. It’s getting complex and multidimensional. While there can be some similarities in the business models, there are a lot of differences between companies that concentrate on hardware and ones that focus on software alone. Of course, we know that access control without hardware doesn’t work. But it’s important to understand that we can learn stuff from each other.

Do you sell hardware or build software? No matter what way your company is going, there needs to be an internal strategy and vision. Most of the revenue of a hardware manufacturer comes from selling controllers, wall readers or smart locks. As a software provider you need to treat your software as a product and create monetisation plans around the service offerings you have.

Historically hardware manufacturers tried to do all by themselves or felt the need to acquire their way into being able to do it. But the question arises: Is it automatically better if it’s done in house? In our opinion software providers should focus on their business and hardware manufacturers should focus on their, namely on manufacturing locks. Why not cooperate and work together? Nevertheless they can learn how to partner and leverage 3rd party expertise better.

Tapkey defines itself as an Access-as-a Service-platform offering mobile access control to all kind of integrators. When speaking about integrating Tapkey, we differentiate between several use cases. Mainly we differentiate between:

Hardware manufacturer who want to create a new product line or upgrade their devices with mobile access, and
Software providers in different verticals (e.g. property management, car sharing or coworking management), who want to add mobile access as an additional feature to their own application

Integrating Tapkey into hardware (e.g. smart lock or telematics box) means implementing our Lock SDK. It gives you the opportunity to create a new product line supporting smartphone-based access. Check out our detailed documentation.

Our longstanding hardware partner, DOM Security, has already digitized their locks in order to stay a competitive player in the market. From year to year, they are expanding their product portfolio with new smartphone-enabled locks. And it all runs on the Tapkey technology. There’s no doubt that integrating mobile access has improved product performance in this case.