Innovation that reimagines
A three-ingredient recipe
Every product we bring to market is the result of the same recipe — three ingredients, combined with discipline and restless ambition. This is how dormakaba reimagines access.
The world
The external forces shaping our innovation
AI. Biometrics. Cloud computing. Advanced encryption. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. Digitalization at building and infrastructure scale. These are critical technology forces dormakaba does not control, but monitors with discipline and integrates with precision to deliver customer value. What does this mean for the buildings our customers operate, and what does it enable for the access they need? Harmonizing these forces is where our competitive edge begins.
Our DNA
The hardware and software interplay that defines dormakaba
dormakaba is one of very few companies that can deliver access across the full span, from mechanical hardware to intelligent, digital control on a single platform. Our hardware foundation is deeply rooted in over 160 years of precision and engineering tradition. Hardware carries the software layer that turns a lock into a smart access point. Software is the connective tissue that links our hardware into one intelligent, managed estate – and this is no recent pivot: for decades, dormakaba has fused precision hardware with embedded firmware, secure‑credential technology and cloud software. Ours is a world‑class hardware foundation, augmented by quantum‑ready encryption, security engineered in by design, and the embedded‑to‑cloud layer that delivers it across the connected world. AI is now part of how we build it – already helping us simplify code and bring new applications to market faster. Every new credential format, connectivity protocol or software layer must be matched by a hardware evolution that delivers it securely and durably; every hardware advance opens new possibilities for the software above it. The one-platform strategy is the architectural expression of that DNA.
Our customers
Customer-driven innovation
Even the most sophisticated technology has no value until it solves a real problem, for a real customer. dormakaba's innovation begins and ends with customer needs. What compliance must a hospital, airport, hotel or data center meet? What threats must building operators address? What sustainability credentials must a specification carry to win a tender? What does a facility manager need to see about their access estate that they cannot see today? We ask these questions continuously – through customer dialogue across 130 countries, through our vertical market teams, and through the commercial feedback from every project won and every specification reviewed. Customer need is what keeps our innovation relevant, for the life of every building we serve.
The recipe produces results. The following examples show how innovation supports dormakaba's growth strategy – creating opportunities in key markets.
Skyra
Access where infrastructure ends
Most access solutions assume mains power, a network and someone on site. Skyra assumes none of them. Engineered in-house, its Bluetooth-enabled rechargeable key secures the places conventional access cannot reach – telecom towers, substations, water treatment plants, remote energy sites – granting and revoking credentials remotely, with a full audit trail and the energy efficiency engineered into the hardware itself. It reached commercial deployment in FY 2025/26, with early wins already secured. Skyra extends dormakaba's reach beyond the building, bringing unmanned, off-grid points into one managed access estate.
Why it matters
Skyra opens an addressable market conventional access cannot serve – making the global build-out of critical infrastructure a direct growth opportunity, with early wins already secured.
TANlock
Securing the most critical door in the digital economy
A data centre is only as secure as its least-protected door. Physically open to anyone already inside, with little audit trail and no link to the building's access control, the server rack has long been the industry's blind spot. Most access strategies work from the perimeter inward; dormakaba acquired TANlock to start at the rack and work outward. Its electromechanical rack locks, modular authentication and IP readers retrofit into existing IT infrastructure and connect to dormakaba's perimeter access control platform – extending one protected estate, one audit trail, from the rack to the front door.
Why it matters
TANlock makes dormakaba one of the very few partners that can secure a data center end to end at scale, from the inside out – a differentiated position dormakaba's growth strategy targets in the world's fastest-investing vertical, with particular momentum in the US.
Lyazon
Liaising platforms and applications
Multi-housing operators and their property technology partners want access that integrates seamlessly into the platforms they already use – not another system to run. Lyazon is the API that responds to this need. Built as an open, cloud-native platform for partners – rather than a product for end users – it places secure access inside a partner's own resident or property app, with no proprietary lock-in or infrastructure to maintain. Where an operator would not adopt a separate dormakaba interface, Lyazon delivers dormakaba's access intelligence through their own – opening a channel the hardware-led model cannot reach. This is interoperability as a growth strategy: dormakaba inside the ecosystem, at the partner's scale.
Why it matters
Lyazon turns proptech partners into a distribution channel, scaling dormakaba access across residential portfolios – a fast-growing North American segment
Innovation across the portfolio: Innovations year-round
In focus
AI & software: the next inflection
First a physical key, then a card, now a mobile phone in your pocket: every era of access has been defined by a new way to prove your identity and gain access, each era demanding new hardware and software innovations. AI marks a different shift – it changes not only how we open the door, but what the building collects and learns from that activity.
As buildings digitalize, they become data platforms in their own right. A single access point can be the route to both physical property and digital assets. AI is making access control a top priority for security operators as the discipline shifts from reacting to incidents – a mechanical failure, a power outage – toward anticipating them, with predictive-maintenance software flagging a fault before it occurs. Access control is becoming the data backbone that makes this possible.
AI plays a dual role. It hardens the estate – from quantum-ready encryption at the credential to intelligence that turns the flood of access and sensor data into the signal that flags a breach before it happens. And it accelerates how we build and manage the estate: AI speeds specification, code upgrades and the development of interoperable, hardware-agnostic SaaS – all with leaner teams.
This is the new ground. Software is opening a greenfield for the industry and a new source of recurring revenue, and dormakaba is already building on it. Intelligent software is only as strong as its command of the doors, credentials and hardware it governs – and that mastery is what dormakaba has built over 160 years in this business.