Ksenia Security: Italian Development and Manufacturing

Around the Sicurezza show in Milan, GIT SECURITY took the ­opportunity to talk with Raffaele Di Crosta of Ksenia ­Security, the Italian security and automation solution manufacturer. The insights he gave us into his company and its ­strategy are detailed in the interview below.

GIT SECURITY: Mr. Di Crosta, GIT SECURITY’s readers have known your Company for quite a while. Let us, however, take a glance at your portfolio to get orientated: Security & Home Automation – what does this include? 

Raffaele Di Crosta: Ksenia offers an IoT solution that covers intrusion, access control, video-audio verification as well as home & building automation. One control panel is used for both the residential and the large industrial or commercial installations, with just one app for the end-user (Lares 4.0). There is an app for the installer too (Ksenia Pro), who now can configure every type of panel from a mobile device (no matter whether tablet or smartphone) in a much faster and convenient way.

What are the main strategic propositions of your brand positioning? 

Raffaele Di Crosta: The four main strategic directions, the four pillars of our positioning, are definitely innovation, design, made-in-Italy and eco-sustainability. To be present in professional business, all these have to be based on strong fundamentals, which in our case are our different certifications, primarily Grade 3 of EN50131.

How does your research and development team look – and could you give us an example of new approaches that differ from those of your competitors? 

Raffaele Di Crosta: Our R&D, formed by young talents in software, firmware and hardware, is definitely working as a single team and adopting the agile-scrum mindset and methodology to improve its communication and the quality and reliability of their developments while significantly decreasing the time to market.

Design is important for your company. This is surely something that is considered a crucial part of being “made in Italy”? 

Raffaele Di Crosta: Yes, it is. Since the very beginning, we have paid a lot of attention to properly design a product, not only from an electronic point of view – which is also very important- but also to make it the nicest product ever, even from an aesthetic perspective, of the right color. Take an outdoor siren as an example; we did not want to impact our historical cities with ugly colors or shapes, so we designed it as little “architecture invasive” as possible.

How is your distribution organized? In what way are you working together with distributors, installers etc.? 

Raffaele Di Crosta: Our business model, and thereby our sales channel, involves only the best professional distributors throughout EMEA. That said, we are now growing even in other continents thanks to our value proposition combined with our strong investments in the sales and marketing organization. Our distributors are fundamentally our real partners, our Ksenia evangelists in their respective marketplaces.

Could you tell us about your latest solutions? 

Raffaele Di Crosta: The latest IoT Solution is named “Lares 4.0”, and is available in different sizes: from 16 to 644 I/O. It covers all possible market needs both in terms of physical security and in smart homes or building management systems. All our control panels are “always connected” thanks to their dual path technology, which is onboard IP + 4G-LTE. Recently, we also launched an energy management system, which for large installations can mean up to 40 % energy saving. Specifically for smart automation, we can also take advantage of voice assistants such as Google Home and Amazon Alexa. Last but not least, as Lares is an open platform, it also integrates perfectly with KNX, control 4 and crestron.

Mr. Di Crosta, you have moved to newly-built headquarters quite recently. What were the reasons for this step? 

Raffaele Di Crosta: Yes, we moved in June into the newly-built Ksenia HQ which encompasses three office buildings with a new R&D center and a much larger manufacturing plant. The company is sometimes growing faster than our expansion plans and we simply needed more space in all areas; offices and plant.

This year was again Sicurezza time in Milano. What did you surprise your customers with in November?

Raffaele Di Crosta: During this trade show, we presented again a lot of new products as a “worldwide premiere”, both for the security and the smart home markets. But we also highlighted the multi-sensor called “Domus”, which was the number one GIT SECURITY award winner in the category Smart Home.

And congratulations for that once again.