Scenario sandbox and product anatomy

Chain retail / stores

Dozens or hundreds of stores spread across the country, none of them with a server room or an IT person. Head office needs to see all of it at once, and to know when a device has died.

Products in play

• Merlin (Platform) — Pure-cloud VSaaS video platform — no server room, quick to subscribe
  Without it: Every store buys its own NVR and disks, head office cannot see them together, and pulling footage means phoning the store manager to do it.
• Merlink+ (Platform) — Software-only edge gateway: multi-brand onboarding, device health polling, remote P2P with no fixed IP or VPN
  Without it: Every store needs a fixed IP or a VPN and firewall rules opened box by box; a dead device is usually discovered only when an incident happens and the footage is not there.
• ResellerHub (Commercial) — Unlimited reseller tiers, device-bound software licensing, automatic renewal reminders
  Without it: Which machine a licence is bound to and when it expires are tracked in Excel, and every missed renewal is revenue straight off the top line.

Estimated at Stores 40, Cameras per store 6

Bandwidth assumes a 1.5 Mbps substream per channel; adjust to your recording policy. Merlink+ is software only and runs on a PC the store already has.

Large campus / buildings

Dozens of buildings and thousands of cameras, bought from different vendors over a decade. It all has to appear on one video wall, and a single failed host must not blind the whole site.

Products in play

• XMap (Operations) — Web Map layered over any VMS — Map View (2D/3D) plus a CMS video wall
  Without it: No way to tell which building or floor a view belongs to — event locations fall back to someone remembering camera numbers, and the wall goes back to one console per VMS.
• Merlink+ (Platform) — Software-only edge gateway: multi-brand onboarding, device health polling, remote P2P with no fixed IP or VPN
  Without it: Newly absorbed legacy systems have to be re-cabled and re-provisioned, stretching the rollout; and a failed device usually surfaces only when footage is needed and missing.
• ResellerHub (Commercial) — Unlimited reseller tiers, device-bound software licensing, automatic renewal reminders
  Without it: Which machine each software licence is bound to, and when it expires, can only be chased on a manual sheet.

Estimated at Buildings 14, Cameras per building 60

Existing nodes are counted at 256 channels each purely to convey scale — XMap does not replace them, it layers over them. The CMS wall goes up to 5×5.

Field patrol / body cams

There is no network on site and both people and vehicles keep moving. Afterwards you must be able to produce credible video and location evidence, and during it you need to talk to the control room.

Products in play

• LiveEdge (Mobile) — Mobile camera line: live BWC / phone streaming, two-way audio and GPS
  Without it: Footage stays inside the vehicle unit or body cam until the shift returns to base; in the moment there is no way to talk to the scene or to see where it is.
• XMap (Operations) — Web Map layered over any VMS — Map View (2D/3D) plus a CMS video wall
  Without it: You know something has happened but not where each vehicle is or how far away, so you cannot dispatch the nearest crew.
• ResellerHub (Commercial) — Unlimited reseller tiers, device-bound software licensing, automatic renewal reminders
  Without it: Every body cam and vehicle unit is one licence. Past a certain count, whose it is and when it expires can only be chased on a sheet.

Estimated at Vehicles 35, Body-cam officers 60

Assumes 30% concurrent, 1.2 Mbps per stream and 4 hours of streaming a day — for a sense of scale only.

Channel monetisation / licensing

Resellers have resellers beneath them, and which machine a licence is bound to and when it expires is all tracked in Excel. Every missed renewal is revenue straight off the top line.

Products in play

• ResellerHub (Commercial) — Unlimited reseller tiers, device-bound software licensing, automatic renewal reminders
  Without it: Ownership and expiry across multiple reseller tiers live in manual spreadsheets, and at any scale things will be missed.
• Merlin (Platform) — Pure-cloud VSaaS video platform — no server room, quick to subscribe
  Without it: With no subscribable cloud product, the channel can only sell hardware once and earns nothing on renewal.

Estimated at Reseller tiers 3, Sub-resellers per tier 3

Assumes 4 customers per reseller and 12 licences per customer. The point where this passes what a person can track by hand is where ResellerHub starts paying for itself.

LiveEdge (Mobile)

Mobile camera line: live BWC / phone streaming, two-way audio and GPS

① No network on site — People and vehicles keep moving, and there is no fixed line

Field capture is a different problem from fixed surveillance. There is no server room, no Wi-Fi, the location keeps moving, and evidence has to hold up afterwards. One LiveEdge line, two carriers: worn on the person, and mounted in the vehicle.

• No fixed line, no Wi-Fi：The mobile network is the only option.
• Location is information in itself：Footage without location and time is worth far less after the fact.

② What the traditional approach costs — Nothing is uploaded until the crew is back, so nothing can be done live

Footage stays in the device and is copied off only at the end of the shift. During the incident the control room is blind and cannot intervene.

• Latency measured in hours：Seeing the footage means waiting for the crew to return, which is no use in an emergency.
• No live intervention：The control room can only ask over the radio; it cannot see the scene.
• Broken chain of evidence：Copying, transcoding and filing by hand — every step is something that can be challenged.

③ How LiveEdge does it — Live 4G uplink with two-way audio

The endpoint pushes video back over the mobile network and opens a return audio channel at the same time — the control room does not just watch, it can talk.

• Live streaming：Visible while it is happening, not afterwards.
• Two-way audio：The control room can step directly into the situation, which one-way recording can never do.
• GPS uploaded in step：Video and location sit on the same timeline.

④ Chain of evidence — Video + GPS + time + officer, bound into one

All four are bound together and sealed at the point of capture, so any later substitution is detectable. In enforcement and audit work, this is what is actually being bought.

• Four-way binding：Miss any one of them and the record can be challenged later.
• Sealed on upload：No manual transcoding, so there are fewer steps anyone can dispute.
• Auditable：Who viewed or exported it, and when, is all on record.

Merlink+ (Platform)

Software-only edge gateway: multi-brand onboarding, device health polling, remote P2P with no fixed IP or VPN

① The situation on site — A decade of accumulated, mismatched equipment

No customer replaces every camera to suit your system. Any solution has to start by accepting that the site is multi-brand and multi-generation.

• Three brands, three protocols：Kit from three vendors online at once, each with its own management console.
• No IT staff：Stores, plants and yards rarely have anyone on site who can configure a network.

② What the traditional approach costs — Every site needs IT involved

To see in from outside, the traditional route is a fixed IP or a VPN plus firewall rules opened device by device. Across many sites that becomes a permanent monthly cost and a permanent configuration job.

• Fixed IP or VPN：One monthly fee and one setup job per site — multiply by the number of stores in a chain.
• Firewall opened device by device：Opening inbound paths is something security will usually refuse, or drag through a long process.
• Device status checked by hand：A broken camera is usually discovered when an incident happens and the footage is not there.

③ How Merlink+ does it — One connection built outward, nothing opened inward

Merlink+ is software only, installed on a machine the customer already has. It collapses the site’s mixed devices into one interface, then opens a P2P tunnel outbound from the inside.

• Software only, on your own hardware：What is sold is a software licence, not a box — an existing PC or any standard x86 machine will run it.
• P2P with no IP and no VPN：The connection is made outward, so no inbound port is ever opened.
• Mixed brands consolidated：Mismatched devices are unified at this layer, so everything above sees one interface.

④ Local health checks — When a device dies, you know before the customer does

Merlink+ polls every device continuously on the local network. Going offline, a bad image or a recording gap is reported straight away, rather than surfacing when footage is needed and missing.

• Active polling：It does not wait for devices to report themselves; Merlink+ checks them directly on the same LAN.
• Immediate offline alert：The Brand C unit is already offline — something you know before anything happens.
• An SLA you can commit to：Once device availability can be measured, a maintenance contract becomes negotiable.

Merlin (Platform)

Pure-cloud VSaaS video platform — no server room, quick to subscribe

① The situation on site — Every store is an island with no IT

Chain retail is not one big project but dozens or hundreds of small ones. Any approach that needs a skilled pair of hands on site has its cost multiplied by the store count.

• No server room：Floor space in a store is for selling things, not for housing servers.
• No IT staff：What a store manager can be asked to do stops at the power switch.
• Head office needs to see everything at once：Not phone each store and ask them to find the footage.

② What the traditional approach costs — One NVR per store, with the cost hidden in the next three years

Buying the box is only the first line item. Disk life, capacity expansion and the labour of retrieving footage all grow linearly with store count.

• Disks are consumables：Nobody notices at the time; it surfaces when footage is needed and was never recorded.
• Expansion means replacement：Want another 30 days of retention? On most models that means a whole new unit.
• Retrieving footage means a site visit：Travel cost times stores times occurrences — an arithmetic few people actually do.

③ How Merlin does it — Nothing left in the store that needs maintaining

Video goes straight to the cloud and the store keeps only its cameras. Opening a store starts a subscription; closing one ends it.

• No server room：No server, no disks, no UPS batteries to replace.
• Live on opening day：A new store goes live the same day, with no wait for hardware or an engineering slot.
• Predictable cost：A subscription turns the IT cost of opening stores into a number that fits in a financial model.

④ How it relates to the other products — The cloud is only the middle layer

Below it, Merlin needs Merlink+ to bring mixed-brand devices in; above it, it needs ResellerHub to become a billable business.

• Below: Merlink+：No camera replacement required — existing mixed-brand kit comes in as it is.
• Above: ResellerHub：Subscriptions have to be bindable, billable and self-reminding before the channel has any reason to sell them.
• Alongside: XMap：On campus and building deals, one more layer of map puts every camera back where it physically is.

XMap (Operations)

Web Map layered over any VMS — Map View (2D/3D) plus a CMS video wall

① The situation on site — Hundreds of cameras, and no view tells you where it is

Campuses, yards and junctions all share this: the video carries no geography. The first question about any clip is always "where is this?"

• Cameras are a list, not a map：CAM-01 through CAM-800, with the locations held in someone's head.
• Events cannot be located：You know something happened but cannot say which building, floor or row.

② What the traditional approach costs — A video grid cannot answer "where"

The traditional VMS answer is to cram more tiles onto one screen. More tiles only makes the locating problem worse.

• It depends on people, not places：It rests on an experienced operator's memory, and breaks the moment they leave.
• Dispatch cannot be precise：With no exact location, the front line has to get there and then search.
• Across systems it is worse：Different buildings run different VMSs, and even the numbering conventions differ.

③ How XMap does it — Putting video back into geographic context

XMap is a web map layered over the VMS already in place; the customer keeps their system. Cameras, events and assets all hang on the map, and when detail is needed you drill from the campus down to the floor plan.

• Layered over, not replacing：Cameras from any brand or system share one map.
• Events land on a place：An alarm lights up on the map rather than arriving as a number.
• Drill down to the floor：A real floor plan layers over the campus map, and it can be swapped for the customer’s own drawing.

④ From map to video — Map View and CMS View are the same data

Click the map and you are in the video; an event in the video takes you back to the map. Both views share one permission model and one event model.

• Two-way：Map to video, video to map.
• One permission model：No gap where the map shows something the video cannot produce.
• The event layer carries its own SOP：An emergency raises a banner and focuses the map automatically, with a step-by-step checklist and a full record of what was done.

ResellerHub (Commercial)

Unlimited reseller tiers, device-bound software licensing, automatic renewal reminders

① The situation on site — Resellers have resellers beneath them

The channel is not one layer. Vendor, distributor, systems integrator, end customer — each tier has its own discounts, quotas and customer relationships.

• The depth varies：Some markets stop at two tiers, others need four. The system has to accommodate that rather than dictate it.
• Licences bind to devices：Not to a person or a company, because the device is what is actually in use.
• The vendor cannot see the end customer：That is inherent to selling through a channel, but it does not mean licence status has to be a black box too.

② What the traditional approach costs — Under two hundred records, Excel genuinely works

The problem is not that Excel is bad, it is that it does not scale. Once the licence count passes what a person can track, every missed renewal is revenue lost outright.

• Reconciliation by hand：Which machine, which version, bound to which customer — all kept current by someone remembering to update it.
• Expiry by memory：An expiry date nobody is reminded of is a date that passes.
• Missed = revenue lost：And it is usually the customer's call to say it has stopped working that tells you.

③ How ResellerHub does it — Binding, tiering and automatic expiry reminders

A licence binds to a device, belongs to a reseller at some tier, and announces itself before it expires. Unlimited tiers, with no assumption about the shape of your channel.

• Unlimited tiers：Two tiers or four, each with its own discounts and quotas.
• Automatic expiry reminders：The reminder goes to that tier's reseller and to the vendor at once, with nobody checking a spreadsheet.
• Device binding：Swaps, returns and transfers are all recorded and produceable at audit.

④ Turning one-off sales into renewals — What the channel actually cares about is whether there is revenue next year

Selling a box pays once. A cloud subscription plus licence renewals is revenue that returns every year and compounds — provided no renewal is missed.

• One-off vs renewal：For the same customer, by year five the difference is several times over.
• Renewal rate is the lever：The compounding curve depends on not losing existing contracts, and a missed renewal is missed compounding.
• It gives the channel a reason to sell：Resellers put sales resource behind products that pay them again next year.