It's the man behind the machine which counts. A vendor with Solid business and financial track-record with good credentials is key factor in evaluation.
Strength and quality of overall management and the local team managing customer's initiative, makes a big difference. Its important to know the credentials and profile of people working on your project.
The highest confidence assessment is on how the vendor-tool-software has performed with reference to other projects in overall and customer-specific context.
The tool/software offering to you is an overall consortium of tool providers, distribution partners, implementation partners and other collaborators. A customer must know and assess all the players in the game.
