Call me a bluff old conservative, but I never was a great one for putting all my proverbials in one basket; it just never made sense to me. Better to spread things around a bit and try to plan for every eventuality, than risk ending up with yolk all over my face.

Certainly, with world markets beset by uncertainty and talk of all manner of further trouble ahead, it’s a philosophy that’s never looked more sound (I tells ya) - not least when it comes to making software investments.

Things are far from certain in software right now. Consolidation is rife. The more highly geared, highly leveraged vendors are becoming increasingly easy cannon fodder for the bigger, richer boys. Cash counts, and a sale in the bank is worth three in the pipeline.

In other words, it isn’t so much survival of the fittest at the moment, as survival of the richest. Especially those cash-rich enough to splash out and strengthen their positions via acquisition while everyone else is having to tighten their belts.

Take the big four. Like Mr.Creosote in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, the bigger Oracle, SAP, IBM, and Microsoft get, the greedier they seem to become.

Having gobbled up Hyperion, Business Objects, and Cognos in quick succession, they suddenly own half the $7bn business intelligence market for instance. And more M&As will surely follow as these four circling great whites lure more and more users into their shallow water feeding frenzy with all-encompassing offerings.

But what’s that got to do with you? That’s just the way of things in a free market surely? Besides, acquired businesses often benefit from fresh thinking, innovation, and the cash injection such deals bring. And in this case a more consolidated platform would streamline your processes and deliver some of those cost savings you’ve been looking for.

The thing is that in the end, while we can kid ourselves all we want, the man offering all things to all people is a man to beware.

The software market’s behemoths ultimately only have a single goal - to standardise everyone around a single platform. Theirs. And before you can say hostile takeover, the vendor lock-in you’ve fought so hard to avoid over the years is suddenly a real possibility.

As such, competition and independent thinking are not just welcome, they’re vital. If Google’s success is anything to go by then where there’s a will there’s certainly a way. But deep pockets help too.

To egg on?

(Toast.)