We were surprised last Friday to see ESA release an ITT to develop an “e“e-commerce platform for micro-services”services”. We were completely unaware of this project although given the pre-announcement we should have been) and have had no discussions with ESA concerning it.

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Now, all this may be possible with the ESA project, but it creates a winner takes all situation which we have strongly tried to avoid. Had we been asked, we should probably have recommended awarding One possible solution would be to award a series of grants whereby several platforms could have been built. This would avoid the market distortion which a single tender will inevitably create. But the tender has been launched and we feel the need There are certainly other possible solutions as well. Our goal will be to ensure that the platform should work fully with eoMALL and that it maintains a competitive environment.

I should be very happy to have views from companies on this tender.