The conventional wisdom is that it's always better to have fewer software vendors--or even a single vendor--to manage than it is to use multiple vendors. Now that, according to a recent Forrester Research report, there are only 17 large independent software vendors left, it's a good time to reevaluate this closely held belief.
CIOs who subscribe to the "one-throat-to-choke" approach to vendor management typically think about it in one of two ways: Either they want to get the various company departments that run different tools to agree to a single provider or they want to forestall deployment of new tools until their big enterprise vendor supplies them. The goal is to, one way or the other, achieve a standard platform and make running IT easier.
But reliance on a handful of vendors may not be in your best interest. This is especially true now, when the software market is consolidating.
Source: CIO, http://cio.com