It is the largest vendor of liquor in Greater Houston.

Nokia was the world's largest vendor of mobile phones from 1998 to 2012.

At the time, Compaq was focused on the enterprise market and had recently purchased several other large vendors.

These days, when a small company wants to do business with a large vendor over the Internet, having a high-speed connection is not nearly enough.

"That's absolutely a result of their larger vendors telling small businesses to upgrade security," he said.

"Most small-business owners don't have time to set up a companywide security policy, but that's exactly what some of the larger vendors are looking for."

The market has been consolidating rapidly, as smaller companies fold or are snapped up by larger vendors.

As for the larger vendors, those will be delicate negotiations, I'm sure.

What is more, corporate software customers are increasingly interested in finding vendors large enough to offer support services around the world.

Companies want to centralize their purchases into a few very large vendors.