MOSS™ - an affordable and sustainable way to deploy market-leading VMS and AI solutions.

Rather than a traditional capital purchase or cloud-hosted model, MOSS™ provides a hybrid approach: the hardware resides physically at the customer’s location, but ownership, management, maintenance and life-cycle support remain with VMS Co. throughout the subscription term, supported with a next business day, engineer-on-site warranty.

This model delivers many of the commercial and operational benefits associated with cloud solutions, such as predictable subscription costs, flexibility, and managed service support, while also retaining the performance, security, and local control advantages of an on-site infrastructure.

We asked Nick Bowden, MD of Video Management Servers Ltd, to explain the key benefits of MOSS™.

1. Financial Benefits: OpEx Budgeting and Cost Reduction

One of the foundational benefits of MOSS™ is its payment structure. Instead of requiring a significant, upfront capital expenditure (CapEx) to purchase servers, customers pay a predictable, monthly subscription fee. This fee is treated as a maintenance or operating cost, which can be aligned with operational expenditure (OpEx) budgeting, often simplifying internal approval processes. This approach helps businesses, especially those with strict capital spend policies or budget constraints, to deploy a high-performance VMS infrastructure, without a large, initial outlay. It also allows businesses to better manage cash flow and allocate expenditure to other priority areas. 

MOSS™ significantly reduces broadband and ongoing video streaming costs, compared to cloud. Traditional cloud-based CCTV or VMS solutions require the constant upload of high-resolution video to remote cloud datacentres, which can incur substantial bandwidth, storage and processing expenses. By recording and storing video locally on a MOSS™ server, these streaming and broadband costs are dramatically reduced. In addition, because local recording does not depend on high-capacity internet connections, businesses avoid the need to upgrade to or source expensive broadband or network services to support constant cloud connectivity. 

By packaging server delivery, installation, maintenance and warranty into one monthly fee, MOSS™ helps to reduce the cost of entry and affordability of high-quality video management systems, increasing uptake and wider use. Businesses no longer need to budget separately for hardware, support contracts, warranties, and future replacements — all are bundled into the subscription. This bundling offers immediate affordability, which is especially useful for small and mid-sized systems or budget-constrained projects where traditional purchase models might be prohibitive.

2. Managed Service Model with Technical Support

With MOSS™, VMS Co. offers comprehensive managed support, retaining ownership of the hardware and taking full responsibility for managing, maintaining, and supporting the server throughout the subscription duration. This maximises hardware uptime, driven by its engineer-on-site warranty coverage, solving technical support issues in real-time and bespoke service level agreements (SLAs) to ensure response times proportional to site security requirements.
Standard support is next business day field engineer attendances, but customers may choose faster response times (e.g., 4-hour critical support) depending on the mission-critical nature of the application. This managed service approach gives customers peace of mind, knowing that expert engineers, familiar with video management, server hardware and networks, are maintaining the system. It also reduces reliance on in-house IT or integrator support teams to troubleshoot or manage server health.

MOSS™ simplifies vendor engagement with a single contract and single point of contact. Instead of juggling separate contracts for hardware, maintenance, warranty, installation, SLA and upgrades, customers have a single subscription agreement with VMS Co. This reduces administrative overhead and improves clarity on service expectations, costs, and responsibilities. Add-ons or expansions can be rolled into the same contract pro-rata, keeping all site equipment within a single, unified service framework.

3. Life-Cycle Flexibility and Continuity

A core feature of MOSS™ is that VMS Co. manages both the hardware life cycle and renewal process. When servers reach end-of-life (EOL); or become sub-optimal due to wear; or when site requirements change, customers can replace or upgrade them. VMS Co offers a MIGRATE service to scale up or re-specify servers mid-term if surveillance needs increase. A common example is when adding more cameras or expanding analytics capabilities. This scalability ensures that the hardware infrastructure can adapt to growing demands without traditional procurement cycles. In turn, this offers continuity of operation without requiring the customer to perform the complex hardware migrations themselves. This flexibility is a significant advantage over both outright purchase and more similar to cloud subscription models, as customers can adjust their capacity and performance over time, while retaining local control. It gives businesses peace of mind that as their system grows, their hardware needs can adapt with minimum disruption in a closely managed fashion.

4. Performance, Reliability and Security Advantages

Many cloud-based video management platforms constrain recording resolutions or frame rates, such as dropping from 25fps to 6fps, to minimise streaming, storage and process expenses. In contrast, MOSS™ maintains optimal recording quality in systems due to local recording. This allows the high-quality and high-frame-rate footage essential for critical use cases, without compromise. So, by recording on-site, these systems preserve evidential video quality.

5. Sustainability and ESG Benefits

In addition to performance and financial benefits, MOSS™ can contribute to corporate sustainability goals. The service utilises renewed ICT (Information and Communication Technology) hardware, which reduces environmental impact compared to manufacturing new equipment. Using renewed servers, with updated power supplies and storage drives, significantly lowers carbon emissions over the ICT equipment life cycle. This positioning aligns well with growing business commitments to environmental, social and governance (ESG) targets, including net zero emissions strategies and sustainability procurement policies – a growing requirement, particularly in government agencies.

6. Commercial and Market Opportunities for Integrators

MOSS™ helps system integrators generate recurring revenues in a combined hardware and software-as-a-service (SaaS) subscription, business model. Costs shift from one-time transactions to predictable installments, by marrying cloud rental software solutions with locally deployed rental hardware in an entirely subscription-based, managed service.

Conclusion

The MOSS™ subscription offering from Video Management Servers Ltd innovatively blends the performance and control benefits of local servers with the commercial and operational convenience of subscription-based managed services. Through predictable budgeting, comprehensive managed support, scalable infrastructure, enhanced performance, improved security, sustainability contributions, and commercial opportunities for integrators, MOSS™ delivers a compelling alternative to both traditional purchase and cloud-centric VMS models.

MOSS™ addresses critical Cloud deployment issues, by:

• Removing multiple points of system failure
• Removing video streaming costs into the Cloud datacentre
• Replacing Cloud (someone else’s server) with a MOSS™ (Managed On Site Server)
• Enabling simple system configuration on dedicated servers
• Increasing system security with dedicated, managed servers
• Reducing business broadband costs – replacing video streaming with remote viewing
• Reducing dependence on unreliable broadband or WAN networks

Video Management Servers Co. - Making VMS and analytics simple, affordable, and sustainable.