Vendor identification and engagement

Vendor breakout discussion, Managers/Strategic track

How best to engage potential vendors?

• Have ready-to-hand slides and data about potential users
• Not via twitter

Who have we approached already? and what has been the response?

• UK firm that already manages Koha LMS (software.coop), and another that does Ruby development. They wanted to understand what services were needed & the market/demand
• (not about Hydra but a different OSS project) US a firm that does Kuali and one that offers Sakai support, one gave a fair amount of detail about their decision-making process around deciding who to support

What are potential services a vendor could offer?

• Hosting
• Consulting and providing services around getting installations up and running
• Custom contracted development
• Marketing and promotion*
• Maintenance agreements
• Training (aside: is this possible if the vendors haven't ever written code)
• Technical writing and documentation (does this serve the project or individual users? Hydra doesn't have money, but what if it did?)*
• Provide demo and sandbox environments for potential users
• UI/UX work
• DevOps planning and setup/consulting
• Architectural and modeling expertise/consulting

How to attract potential firms?

• A pitch. What should it contain?
  
  • Information sheet on Hydra, what it is 
  • Technology/architecture profile so they know what the components are
  • Engagement stories: give them some specific information about what a typical institution would want to contract, typical length of engagement
  • Tell a compelling story about the market, what's the economic argument?
  • The scope of the market, including the growth curve: number of partners, number of commits
  • Growth projection
  • Demographic/geographic profile: who has adopted, where are they?
  • Community culture
  • Definition of the product they are being asked to support (what are the boundaries?)
  • Benefits of getting involved (vendor promotion amongst users, registered provider status, etc.)
• Interview a vendor to find out what questions they'd ask, how they evaluate whether to take on a new technology
• Identify list of possible candidates to approach

Project/partnership questions

• Hydra doesn't have money, but if it did, what services would be worth investing in?
  
  • Those marked with an asterisk above may be options for Hydra commissioning directly with a vendor, as opposed to inviting vendors to support partners and users of Hydra
• What should be the role of vendors in the core business of/governance of the partnership?
• What's desirable in terms of number and distribution? Do we need more than 2? Should we try to recruit with an eye towards geographic distribution?
• How to learn from the troubles of other OS projects re: vendors developing proprietary customizations, attempting to trademark the product? We are Apache-licensed, so we are limited in how we can deal with this in the software license. To a certain degree, it will be possible to address in contracts with partner institutions (to make sure that any new features are contributed back). 
• Should we develop a registered or preferred vendor program? See DuraSpace vendor program – note Hydra is not an incubated project at present so not specifically eligible for this
• What is or could be the link with DuraSpace's incubator program?
• Is there a link between work needed to pitch to vendors and work to 'pitch' to managers?