Hi Rob,
may be we can help you. Usually we look for contracting a project like yours. We are experienced in creating of frame work - we have never used framework of other firm because we hate dark boxes. We have developed our own classes with which develop systems faster. We have experience in n-tier IS.
We have experience in converting old FP in VFP/SQL Server one.
For my 17 programmers will be not a problem to convert system till end of 2002 and you to begin to work from beginning of 2003. We can send our POS application to evaluate us, may be some of the tings we already have developed and you will be able to use it immediately.
For us long distance is not problem we have customers in New Zealand, USA, Canada… I hope that with your support we can build new scalable application depend on requirement of your President.