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A while back, I received an invitation from Information Builders to attend their symposium. One of the speaker would be AkzoNobel where I lost a deal to Information Builders. So I was quite intereseted in what he would tell. I registered myself on their web site with full contact and company (Microsoft) information.
To my surprise I got a call last week for Information Builders. They were not amused that I, a competitor, had registered for their event. How would I feel if my competitors would attend an event of mine. Well, actually, that's business-as-usual and I told him so. He didn't like it that I had registered for their event, but he didn't have the guts to forbid me to attend.
Today, when I arrived at the event I discovered that I wasn't registered. Somehow my registration had been deleted 
Well, the hostess was very polite and welcomed me to the event anyway.
I now also know more about the Information Builders offering and what they consider important. But I also discovered one of the reasons that we lost at AkzoNobel. I already knew that they built a ton of custom code. But it now turned out that Information Builders has taken ownership of the code. That's one way of getting free development for the customer.