Written and fact-checked by Roman Gaufman, Founder & CEO, TetherX

WHERE THE MARCH NETWORKS RESHUFFLE FORCES A LOOK

Delta + VIVOTEK merger. CloudSight to VORTEX. VAST 2 EoM. Quote-only.

Brand and partner-programme consolidation in flight

March Networks and VIVOTEK announced an operational merger on 23 March 2026, closing mid-April 2026 once Delta completed the VIVOTEK take-private. Both brand names stay in market short term, but the North American sales organisations are already consolidating and an integrated partner programme lands in 2027. Roadmap and partner economics then sit inside Delta's smart-building portfolio rather than in two independent companies.

CloudSight unifying into VORTEX later in 2026

CloudSight, the prior camera-to-cloud product, unifies with VIVOTEK VORTEX under the VORTEX brand later in 2026. VIVOTEK has been the OEM behind CloudSight for years, so the engineering already overlaps. What changes visibly is the sales motion, the billing and the customer-facing brand, and CloudSight customers migrate over time.

VIVOTEK VAST 2 End-of-Maintenance on the manufacturer side

VIVOTEK VAST 2 (the long-running Windows software VMS that sits alongside the March Networks Command stack under the merged entity) is End-of-Maintenance. Customers are being pushed onto VSS (paid per-channel on-prem) or VORTEX (per-camera cloud). VORTEX cloud recording requires VORTEX-branded camera models and the subscription has a whole-account tier lock (xLite / xStd / xPro applies to every device on the account).

Deep in banking and retail, thinner everywhere else

March Networks cites more than 1,000 financial institutions and over 300 retailers, and Searchlight Cloud is built around correlating video with point-of-sale and ATM transactions. Inside those verticals it is genuinely hard to beat. Outside them, a customer is buying a general video platform from a company whose engineering attention points at till receipts. Plain-English search across a whole estate is meanwhile shipping faster on the cloud-native side.

AT A GLANCE

March Networks and TetherX, question by question

The 6 questions an integrator asks on a site walk, answered for both platforms.

Question March Networks TetherX
What you do with the recorders already on site Command Enterprise is a Windows-server VMS licensed per channel, with Windows infrastructure underneath. Searchlight Cloud adds analytics over the top rather than moving the recording. They stay. The TetherBox sits alongside the existing NVRs, DVRs and panels and pulls from them. It runs as software on a server the site already owns, so nobody rips out working kit to start.
What your operators see on one timeline Video-led, with Searchlight correlating point-of-sale and ATM transactions against footage. That correlation is the product. Video, access control, intruder and automation. One operator, one timeline, one dashboard across all four.
Where the AI runs Searchlight Cloud analytics, designed around retail and banking transaction correlation rather than open-ended search. At the edge on the TetherBox: person, vehicle and animal detection plus 63-class audio analytics, searchable across multi-site footage in seconds. The platform keeps evolving with additional analytics through the year.
Who you buy it from Quote-only through the channel. Command Enterprise, Searchlight Cloud, Insight monitoring and Evidence Vault all price on request, and VORTEX publishes SKU pricing on the VIVOTEK side without that yet reaching the March Networks line. Your installer, always. TetherX sells through the channel only and does not quote end customers direct, so the integrator keeps the account.
What you actually pay for Per-channel licences plus a Software Maintenance Agreement to keep updates and support active, plus the Windows servers. No published list price to check a renewal against. An annual subscription by channel count, from £100/site/year. Not per operator seat, not per analytic, and no concurrent-user cap.
What you keep if you stop paying The licences keep running without the maintenance agreement, and updates stop. The larger question is the merger: CloudSight customers are being unified into VORTEX during 2026, and VORTEX cloud recording needs VORTEX-branded cameras with a subscription tier that applies to the whole account. The TetherBox keeps a local interface for live view and recent footage with no Internet and no subscription, so the site is never dark.

March Networks column built from: March Networks, VIVOTEK VORTEX.

MARCH NETWORKS vs TETHERX

Enterprise Windows-VMS + cloud reshuffle vs cloud-native that keeps your cameras.

Both serve installer-led security deployments. The honest read on where each one wins and where each one costs you something.

March Networks

Strengths

25 years of banking-vertical heritage - Searchlight Cloud POS / ATM / transaction-correlation analytics at 1,000+ financial-institution scale

Delta Electronics parent (since Dec 2021) - large smart-building conglomerate backing the long-term roadmap

VIVOTEK consolidation (April 2026) integrates camera manufacturer and VMS under one vendor

Trade-offs

Command Enterprise is Windows-server VMS - per-channel licence + annual Software Maintenance Agreement, not cloud-native

CloudSight migrating into VIVOTEK VORTEX later in 2026 and VAST 2 End-of-Maintenance - active migration window for existing customers

TetherX

Strengths

Cloud-native architecture - no Windows server tax, no manual patching, no migration window from one cloud product to another

March Networks and VIVOTEK cameras stay in place over ONVIF - no rip-and-replace

Cloud recording optional per camera - local-only, cloud-only or both, all in one platform

Trade-offs

You are a bank or a large retailer and you need till and ATM transactions tied to the footage. March Networks Searchlight is the deeper banking VMS.

Pricing figures, ownership, acquisition dates and product behaviour cited on this page are point-in-time and drawn from public sources - see the disclaimer at the bottom of this page for sourcing, "as of" date, and how to flag corrections.

WHICH ONE FITS

Pick the one your site points at

Find the column that describes the job in front of you.

Choose March Networks if

  • The customer is a bank or a retail chain and correlating till or ATM transactions with video is the reason for the project
  • An existing March Networks estate is working and the maintenance agreement is already budgeted
  • Policy keeps recording on-premise and Searchlight analytics in the cloud is as far as the customer will go
  • The vertical expertise in the account team is worth more than the platform architecture

Choose TetherX if

  • The site is not a bank or a shop, so the transaction correlation the platform is built around is not what you need
  • The merger has put the roadmap, the partner programme and the cloud brand in flux and you would rather not carry that
  • CloudSight is migrating to VORTEX and you do not want to buy VORTEX-branded cameras to keep cloud recording
  • You want a price you can quote rather than a request that goes to the channel
FAQ

Questions before you migrate off Command or CloudSight

March Networks Command Enterprise is a Windows-server VMS licensed per channel with a Software Maintenance Agreement (the annual fee that keeps updates and support active). Searchlight Cloud, the analytics layer, is purpose-built for POS / ATM / transaction correlation in banking, retail and transit - sharp inside those verticals, narrower outside them.

The cloud side is in motion. CloudSight (the prior camera-to-cloud product) is being unified into VIVOTEK VORTEX later in 2026 under the merged Delta-owned organisation, and VIVOTEK VAST 2 is End-of-Maintenance with customers pushed onto VSS (paid per-channel on-prem) or VORTEX. TetherX is the cloud-native, channel-only alternative that keeps the existing cameras in place across the reshuffle - see the company history section near the bottom of this page for the corporate timeline.

The basics work. Both March Networks and VIVOTEK IP cameras are broadly ONVIF Profile S/G/T compliant and TetherX supports them as standard - the existing fleet keeps streaming on TetherX with no rip-and-replace.

Be aware of the camera-OEM-VMS reality. As with most enterprise VMS platforms, deeper functions are richest in the manufacturer's own software and only partly exposed over ONVIF: edge analytics, two-way audio, PTZ presets and motion zones. For live and recorded video, search and event review across a mixed fleet, that is not an issue. On a single-vendor estate leaning on March Networks or VIVOTEK edge analytics, validate the exact features you need before committing.

March Networks CloudSight and VIVOTEK VORTEX are being merged under the VORTEX brand later in 2026. VIVOTEK has been the OEM behind CloudSight, so the engineering substrate already overlaps; the visible change is sales motion, billing and the customer-facing brand on the dashboard. Customers on CloudSight will, over time, be migrated onto VORTEX. The contract length, pricing transition and feature parity between the two are the practical questions to put to the channel manager before renewal.

Brand-and-platform unifications are a natural moment to step back and ask whether the cloud platform is the right one for the next renewal cycle. TetherX is an independent UK + AU cloud VMS - no consolidation roadmap, no portfolio-rationalisation risk, ringfences the cameras behind a TetherBox over an outbound-only encrypted tunnel so any future security bug on any camera or middleware is contained.

March Networks does not publish a list price. Command Enterprise is licensed per channel with a Software Maintenance Agreement (the annual fee that keeps updates and support active) and Windows-server infrastructure on top. Searchlight Cloud is sold on a per-site / per-camera basis through the channel, with the POS / transaction analytics tier priced separately. On the VIVOTEK side, VORTEX published 2026 SKUs (per camera per year): VX-XSTD-1Y $49 list / $36.75 sale, VX-XPRO-1Y $99 list / $74.25 sale, with a separate cloud-recording add-on per camera and a whole-account tier lock (mixing tiers across the same customer account is not supported). TetherX is an annual platform subscription priced by channel count (from £100/site/year) through your installer partner, with cloud recording, AI search and ARC integration as optional per-camera services. No whole-account tier lock and no need to use a specific camera model for cloud recording.

Delta Electronics is a Taiwanese listed conglomerate (TWSE: 2308, founded 1971) covering power electronics, EV infrastructure and industrial automation. Delta acquired March Networks in December 2021 and has been majority owner of VIVOTEK since 2017. Delta signed its 100% take-private of VIVOTEK on 1 December 2025 (~NT$3.73B / US$118.8M); the VIVOTEK extraordinary general meeting was held 16 January 2026 with a tentative effective date of 27 March 2026. The March Networks + VIVOTEK operational merger was announced on 23 March 2026, with a mid-April close contingent on the Delta take-private completing.

The combined organisation runs across 75+ countries with 1,300+ channel partners and distributors and 300+ R&D engineers across four global centres. Both brand names remain in market in the short term; near-term integration is sales-org consolidation (done in early May 2026 in North America) and the CloudSight-into-VORTEX cloud move later in 2026, with the integrated partner programme planned for 2027. For customers the practical question is which products get the engineering investment under the merged entity. The manufacturer's site is the authoritative source for current product status.

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COMPANY HISTORY

March Networks, VIVOTEK and the Delta Electronics merger

March Networks was founded in Ottawa in 2000 and built its enterprise install base across banking, retail and transit. Delta Electronics (TWSE: 2308, Taiwanese, founded 1971) acquired March Networks in December 2021. Delta has been majority owner of VIVOTEK since 2017; Delta signed its 100% take-private of VIVOTEK on 1 December 2025 (~NT$3.73B / US$118.8M), held the EGM on 16 January 2026, with a tentative effective date of 27 March 2026. The March Networks + VIVOTEK operational merger was announced 23 March 2026 with a mid-April close contingent on the Delta take-private completing.

North American sales organisations were consolidated by early May 2026. The combined organisation now runs across 75+ countries with 1,300+ channel partners and distributors and 300+ R&D engineers across four global centres. March Networks lists 1,000+ financial institutions, 300+ retailers and 800+ commercial / industrial customers. Both brand names remain in market in the short term; the integrated partner programme is planned for 2027.

On the cloud side, CloudSight and VIVOTEK VORTEX unify under the VORTEX brand later in 2026. VIVOTEK has been the original equipment manufacturer behind CloudSight for years, so the engineering already overlaps. On the on-prem side, VIVOTEK VAST 2 is End-of-Maintenance and customers move to VSS or VORTEX, while Command Enterprise, Searchlight Cloud, Insight and Evidence Vault continue. The manufacturer's site is the authoritative source for current product status.

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Across the partner network

TetherX partners hold the accreditations security-procurement buyers and insurers filter on. Coverage varies by partner.

NSI 9 ISO 9001 7 SSAIB 5 SafeContractor 5 BAFE 4 CHAS 4 ConstructionLine 4 Cyber Essentials 3 NICEIC 2 ISO 14001 2 ISO 27001 1

Counts reflect partners currently in the TetherX directory holding each accreditation.

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[1] About this comparison. Information about other vendors is drawn from their public product pages, datasheets, integrator forums (Reddit, vendor user groups), public CVE databases (NVD, CISA), publicly-listed LinkedIn company pages (headcount, headquarters, founding year, leadership transitions and corporate ownership signals) and customer conversations - accurate to the best of our knowledge as of Q2 2026. Pricing, features, security posture and policies change. A vendor may have shipped a fix, dropped a price, added a region or changed an architecture since this page was last reviewed.

If you believe anything here is inaccurate or out of date, please contact us and we will review and correct it. Trademarks and product names belong to their respective owners and are referenced here for identification only.

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