Methodology

Why this calculator is vendor-neutral

HTS is a partner of several vendors included in the calculator. The recommendation engine does not know that. It runs the same 12 deterministic rules against every vendor in the catalog and the first rule to fire wins. There is no "default to vendor X" in the code. If two vendors are at effectively equal TCO, the calculator shows both and lets you decide — it does not pick for you.

The data plane is 100% public source. The calculator never reads from HTS's partner-cost database, margin data, or negotiated rates — those live in a separate, role-restricted schema (called calculator_internal) that the calculator's service principal cannot read. The CI gate also rejects any row whose column names match partner_cost, margin, discount, or negotiated as a defense-in-depth check.

The recommendation engine is a list of 12 rules, written in code, that runs against the user's inputs. Each rule is auditable, each has a citation, and the rule order is fixed. The first rule to fire is the recommendation. The user can see which rule fired and why, including the underlying assumptions. This is critical for trust: a CFO must be able to verify that no hidden model is steering the recommendation toward a vendor that pays HTS more.

The 5 cross-vendor differentiators

The largest hidden costs in a video surveillance quote are warranty and license terms. The calculator surfaces these five differentiators in every recommendation that triggers them:

1. Avigilon Alta warranty is license-conditional. Most Avigilon Alta cameras carry a 10-year hardware warranty only while an Alta Aware license stays continuously active. If the license lapses, the warranty drops to 3-5 years from the original ship date. Verkada's 10-year warranty is not conditioned on license renewal.
2. Rhombus R600 license is 3x the standard rate. The R600 multisensor Enterprise license is priced at roughly 3× the per-camera license of the rest of the R-series.
3. Verkada CH52-E requires 4 separate licenses per head. Each of the 4 heads of the CH52-E requires its own camera license, so a single CH52-E costs 4× the standard per-camera license.
4. Samsara Site Visibility is end-of-sale. Per Samsara's own knowledge base article, "Site Cameras are now end of sale." New units are not available for purchase in 2026.
5. Lumana lifetime warranty is license-conditional. Lumana's "lifetime" hardware warranty applies to the Core bridge appliance "while the customer remains active" — meaning, while the VMS+ license stays continuously active.

Each differentiator is sourced to a public vendor page, a vendor datasheet, a vendor knowledge-base article, or a third-party independent analysis. The source link is on the comparison screen for each.

The 12 recommendation rules

The recommendation engine runs these 12 rules in a fixed order. The first rule to fire is the recommendation. The rule trace ("Why this recommendation?") is shown in the comparison panel.

1. Data sovereignty required (CMMC / CJIS / ITAR / FedRAMP / on-prem-only compliance): Recommend Avigilon Unity or Genetec Security Center on-prem. Hard constraint.
2. HIPAA + cloud with BAA available: Recommend cloud vendors that offer BAAs (Verkada, Avigilon Alta, Meraki). Recommend the cheapest qualifying option.
3. Existing IP cameras to reuse (any vendor, any age): Recommend Lumana or Eagle Eye Networks. Saves the hardware replacement cost.
4. Existing vendor hardware: Recommend staying with the existing vendor. Migration cost > benefit.
5. Single site, 1-25 cameras, no IT staff: Recommend any cloud-native vendor. Pick the cheapest qualifying 5y TCO.
6. Single site, 25-200 cameras, internal IT: Recommend any cloud-native vendor OR on-prem. Break-even depends on IT labor rate. Show both top picks; do not pick one.
7. Single site, 200+ cameras: At this scale, on-prem NVR refresh cycles ($8,000 every 5y) are offset by license savings at $149-$200/cam/yr. Show on-prem and cloud top picks side-by-side.
8. Multi-site (5+ sites), 50-200 cameras total: Recommend any cloud-native vendor. Multi-site cloud management is the differentiator.
9. Multi-site (5+ sites), 200+ cameras, no data sovereignty: Recommend cloud-native top 2 by TCO.
10. Government / FedRAMP / GovCloud requirement: Recommend Verkada GovCloud.
11. K-12 / education / student-privacy requirement: Recommend Rhombus, Verkada with proper config, or Lumana.
12. Budget-sensitive mid-market, existing cameras OK to replace: Recommend Rhombus (15-25% below Verkada per the HTS Top 5 analysis).

If no rule fires: show the cheapest 5y TCO with a "no clear winner — see the breakdown" message.

The 23 TCO assumptions

Every assumption that drives a line in the TCO model. Click any assumption id to read the full source.

Last updated: 2026-08-08. Next planned refresh: 2026-11-08. The CI gate fails the build on any assumption whose last_verified date is more than 180 days old.

Source type preference order

The CI gate enforces a strict preference order on the kind of source used for each assumption. Higher-quality sources are preferred; lower-quality sources fail the build.

1. vendor_published — the vendor's own pricing page, datasheet, warranty page, or end-user agreement. This is the highest-quality source.
2. dealer_price_list — an authorized reseller or distributor's published price list. Used when a vendor does not publish a public MSRP (e.g., Avigilon does not publish a US retail list; the closest public sources are state contract price lists and authorized-reseller public price sheets).
3. industry_benchmark — a published industry study, a vendor-neutral technology blog, or a recognized public calculator.
4. bls — US Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data, used for IT labor rates.
5. peer_reviewed — a peer-reviewed study, used for technical constants like the annual HDD failure rate.

No paywalled sources are used. IPVM, Gartner, IHS Markit, and similar subscription services are not in the data plane. The CI gate rejects any source URL whose domain matches the blocklist. This is enforced at build time, not just policy.

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