The US-based company’s new integrated business unit will be headed up by Mark Terry (pictured). In a move that is said to underline its “ongoing commitment to invest in cutting-edge” systems for whole house automation, the new unit will integrate responsibilities for Niles Audio, Xantech and ELAN Home Systems (including the brands Aton, Sunfire and HomeLogic).
The new operation will be based in Carlsbad, California, and presided over by Terry, who has joined as president of the new unit. ELAN Home Systems’ president/CTO Bob Farinelli, Niles Audio president Frank Sterns and Xantech Graham Hallett will now report directly to Terry, previously best known for his long association with Harman Professional.
Linear LLC chairman Grant D Rummell described the creation of the new unit and the appointment of Terry as “the start of an exciting new chapter” for all the brands concerned. “Niles, Xantech and ELAN have all played historic roles in the markets they serve,” he said. “Now, joined together into one business unit, they will continue to shape the future of their markets. Working together they will be able to collaborate on the development of new technologies that will result in a new generation of audio, video, and control system solutions that meet the whole-house automation, security, lighting and HVAC needs of our global customer base. And I can think of no one more qualified to lead these great brands into the future than Mark Terry, the former president of the Harman Pro Group.”
Terry – who spent 17 years at Harman in a number of senior roles – described the objective of the new unit as the creation of “a larger portfolio of clearly defined, integrated and networked-based product offerings that bring meaningful innovation and value to our whole-house automation, lighting, security and HVAC control customers. Together we will create a new group that is greater than our individual parts. This is what we achieved at Harman and it is precisely what we will achieve here at Linear.”
Recent product developments from this Linear business unit include ELAN’s “g!” whole-house entertainment and management system, which uses open standards and IP to realise straightforward control from a variety of interfaces, and – also from ELAN – an embedded home lighting system, ELAN Lighting.