The small guys had the better ideas and the better products, for network savvy engineers that did their own bake-off tests in their own labs. Each one got a bit too scary for the big guys, so they bought them, swallowed them up whole, and eliminated the competiton.
Each one of these good products that were headed in the right direction, and had a loyal base of customers, were ruined by the big guys that ate them up. EMC screwed up Smarts, IBM is screwing up MicroMuse, etc.
When you take a deep look at the "framework" products the big guys offer, it is really a mish-mash of many different products and technologies all stitched together into a big expensive, complex, unwieldy beast that requires an entire staff to administrate.

When will these big guys (IBM, HP, EMC, CA, etc.)wake up? They are like the Detroit automakers, they just cant change, the inertia is just to great, instead they will just continue to produce their stodgy old Detroit irons.

If a good startup would resist the temptattion of the big money, and resist being bought out by the big guys, they could take a big chunk of the market by doing things efficiently and intelligently.