Thank you - I was getting worried by all the "the real world is a tough place" comments - this brings it firmly back to the real world is populated by fools who don't understand it.
What happens is that when management gets burned by one of startups, big vendors, or internal dev teams, the response tends to be "ok, we're not doing that again!".
It's like all the silly legal disclaimers you see on... docs, email footers, etc. -- these all represent ways in which some lawyer's customers got burned once. You can't win this game. There's no real reason to think that because you got burned by option A once you always will, especially when you can get burned with all options. But we humans don't work that way. Traumatic experiences tend produce lasting negative responses.
There is just no substitute for understanding the technologies and the people involved. The problem with vendors is that they keep you from really knowing what's going on inside them. One problem with internal dev teams is that they can fall apart.
It's all just hard, and management just has to be very good.
good insights :-)