TechRepublic Blog: 50 ways to leave your lover:

Breaking up is hard to do - your friends and their friends, your stuff and their stuff, all that shared history of broken promises to get over - it's all nasty and complicated and horrible.

The same applies, really, when you try to end a relationship with an existing vendor.

Ramon over at TechRepublic.com has a great piece on how to do so.

Unfortunately in this day and age, leaving your lover just might be easier than leaving your vendor, particularly if you have developed a relationship over time and their product or products are intertwined throughout your organization and infrastructure. This is something that vendors that are trying to woo you often gloss over when they are offering you a competing product at a bargain price. I had a vendor in my office just the other day, and they were telling me just how easy it would be to transition from their competitor's product to their own. It sounded so simple and elegant, and they assured me that they would "be there for me" to help me through the transition. Right. And if I believe that, I should have "all-day sucker" tattooed on my forehead.

By the same token, a new vendor is much like the early days of a romantic entanglement - there are the longing glances, the imagining of what could be, the thrill of new experiences... it all goes on until you settle into a stable, long term relationship.

At least, until the break up...