Wow!
Geez Joe, that's a big nut you're lookin' to crack there! But Brother I love a big thinker! I certainly wasn't thinking along those lines when I posted, but now that you bring it up I'll comment a little. Just for fun.
You make a good point about marketing for instance. I spent many years at Nortel and they very intelligently kept people like me (engineers) well insulated from the the people that actually bought the products. There is no better way to draw the Thousand Yard stare from a corporate exec than to start talking about tech stuff. They had marketing guys for actually selling. These guys were a breed completely apart but I knew them and helped them often. You know, they'd trot us over to some meeting in Tokyo to show a bunch of stupid foils and blab on for awhile about the Black Magic. But then the Smilin' Boys would get their turn. Let me assure you a marketing guys biggest asset is his expense account. They'd roll us all over to some bar with a private room full of hottie hostesses, fill these corporate whales with all the raw fish and champagne they could swill and sing "Hey Jude" with 'em 27 times. Badly off key each time. Then they would repeat this process on subsequent nights until eventually, out would pop a juicy $100 million dollar contract.
Admittedly we weren't selling PBX's (the PBX guys at Nortel were kind of a joke) but I'm sure it works essentially the same way for any product line in any large company. On a smaller scale in every company.
So, if you are going to take these wankers on, you better bring either a really big wallet or a better idea. A
LOT better idea. PIAF in my mind is certainly a better idea. By PIAF I mean to include LAMPA, FPBX etc. of course. I just think it's worth more than $30 a pop in an industrial strength version.
As for your other points ... documentation, this, that, and the other thing ... that's just a given. You don't even knock on the door without that. At least all the doors with the big prizes anyway.
I love your style though dood. Like the old proverb says: "The danger isn't aiming too high and missing the target, it's aiming to low and hitting it".
Dallas