When an enterprise is shopping for database technology, and the right partner to entrust its most valuable business asset, the emphasis should be on understanding what that partner can offer, what that partner is doing in terms of product innovation, and where that partner is investing time, money, staff and strategy.

Is the provider expanding research efforts? Are they continually enhancing current products and innovating on new solutions? Are they smart enough, and financially stable, to buy technology they need to keep moving forward and to meet customers' needs?

The answer, for some database vendors, is no in many respects.

The answer, for IBM, is yes to in all respects.

IBM just opened the doors to its biggest software development lab in North America. The IBM Mass Lab is home to 3,400 experts that can help customers design and create specialized, custom solutions to overcome computing challenges. The center is focused on everything from collaboration, social networking, cloud computing and analytics to enterprise mobile computing.

The lab, which can accommodate 59,000 square feet of server space and features 31 miles of copper and fiber-optic wiring for data networking, virtualization and power monitoring, is just one of 70 centers IBM has built for research and development. The newest lab offers two petabytes of data so engineers can harness computing power and storage to develop software on the latest hardware technology.

And in the situation where IBM realizes it's most efficient and cost effective not to build something new, IBM just goes and gets the technology it needs to expand and enhance current solutions.

This week it announced acquiring business analytics software maker Coremetrics and pulling the vendor's team of 230 employees into its fold.

Coremetrics' tools provide real-time insights into sales trends, customer interactions, Website traffic and other business metrics.

"With this acquisition, we are extending our capabilities to give clients greater insight about customer behavior and sentiment about products and services, giving a true insight into their future buying patterns," said Craig Hayman, general manager for IBM's Websphere group, in a statement.

The IBM software group has now acquired more than 55 companies since 2003.

So, when it's time to reassess that database system, especially in light of what's taking place with some IBM competitors, IT leaders should look at the big picture and not just what a switchover or new deployment may cost.

That aspect is critical, yes, as there is cost savings typically inherent in keeping a vendor's solution in place.

But there is also a very high, and very real, potential cost in staying with the wrong technology partner.