Vendor Preference Holy War

Why is it we technical professionals, acquire such strong loyalties toward our vendor of choice? Just ask a group of UNIX admins which UNIX variant is the "Best". I find this particularly intriguing in the realm of Backup and Recovery products. Some love Symantect NetBackup, others love Tivoli Storage Manager, and yet others gravitate towards a handful of other vendor providers (legato, HP, MS, CA, etc). What gives? Ask any line of business leader which backup product they prefer and you'll get a blank stare. Why? First off all the business really cares about is that when time to restore that file better be there and fast. Okay but what about the IT leadership? Do they have a preference. My experience indicates that indeed they do. So what makes my backup software better than yours? We could blog for years on this one topic alone. Many products have intelligent servers coupled with a type of database that tracks all your files. Some have simple clients that simply open a TCP port for the server to control backup functions (NBU, HP Data Protector). Others have extremely intellignet clients that can push data at the server (e.g. TSM). While the architecture may matter to those dealing with restore functions daily. I submit that perhaps total cost of ownership might be the biggest reason to pick one product over another. How much is training, maintenance, initial cost? When do I get a return on this investment? The first time you have to restore a major system and it works!