Those vendors use those tools to keep, for instance, a Web calendar in sync with Outlook. Or a sales automation tool in sync with the Palm. As a result, just about everybody claims to do synchronization these days. Sooner or later, Microsoft will synchronize everything with everything else. Nobody knows how.
Nobody knows when.
But please don't buy anybody else's technology in the meantime. Trust us, we're Microsoft. Periodically, you try to get them in step through synchronization. Legacy synchronization leaves a lot to be desired. In my case, four times too much to be desired.