I was contacted by a (very) large company that had XOOPS shortlisted as the platform to be used for an internal enterprise wide application, and was asked if my company could recieve an RFI and an RFP (both subject to a Non Disclosure Agreement, so I tend to be a bot vague here), in order to present our product as a candidate for their application. This would be a large commercial project.

I told them that XOOPS is a community powered project, but that we should be able to find large enough companies that could deliver the XOOPS based solution to them. So now I am looking for stable companies that can handle large projects, including high end corporate services (such as service level agreements demand) and is willing to partner with the XOOPS Foundation on this project.
The Foundation isn't into this for the money, the commercial side would be all yours. However, this is such a big project with such potential, that it could help the whole XOOPS project a lot. I want the community to benefit from such a project as much as possible (like I said, XOOPS is a community powered project), as everyone else benefots from them (right?). Hence the partnership. How this would work I haven't figured out yet (probably some form of agreement that must be signed).

The details I cán give you are vague, but it's for an internal application for over 6000 of their employees, and a bundle of their clients. The RFP has 230 requirements and 23 use cases, and the first step would be to see if we can fit XOOPS into that, and make a presentation for them. Then they will decide if they want to use XOOPS or not.
The initial risk of bidding for this project would be yours, financially (the hours you spend to make the presnetation etc.). But, that's always the case.

I am looking for companies that are able to dedicate the resources necessary, and can hold their own with such a large client. You will need to be able to offer high end service level agreements and have a track record they can compare to the competitors (who are both open and closed source, they told me). Continuity is a big issue there (that's why they are looking for large companies).

If you know a company that might fit this bill, let me know too

Herko

Are you able to tell us if this is just for XOOPS Herko, or is it the whole box and dice from server, OS, webserver and Xoops? 6000 employees can create a lot of work, so I personally don't know if there is any one company that could accomodate this effectively to an SLA standard.

I haven't seen the RFP yet, so I can't be sure. But the client is in the IT business itself, so I don't think the hardware will be ian issue. So lets focus on the application, aka XOOPS.

Herko

There are more and more commercial dev demand on XOOPS applications in a varity of areas.

Perhaps XOOPS Foundation could work on some formulation.

phppp, interesting idea. Can you elaborate?

Herko

*humble bump*
H.

I am going back to you on MSN, perhaps this weekend.