We were surprised last Friday to see ESA release an ITT to develop an “e-commerce platform for micro-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.