Platformula: (noun) The creative fusion of your application, cloud service or technology platform with a multi-dimensional partner monetization & success formula.

Platformulas lie at the heart of, and drive revenue growth within leading superpower ecosystems.

Representative examples of market leading platformulas (in alphabetical order) include the:

• Amazon AWS platformula: The leading ecosystem in public cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) providing pay-as-you-grow compute, storage, database and management functionality on-demand for enterprise developers and solution providers. Amazon IaaS supports a wide cross-section of mainstream IT environments including Oracle, Microsoft, open source Linux and more.
• Apple iOS platformula: The dominant device + service ecosystem in the mobility segment (smartphones, tablets) encompassing more than 500,000 3rd party free, paid or sponsored apps, 25 billion app downloads, enhanced cloud services, and strong relationships with the dominant carriers in the global communications industry.
• eBay e-commerce platformula: The online marketplace and payments superpower connecting scores of millions of buyers and sellers around the world, while enabling Open eBay developers to leverage their API and platform. The eBay buyer/seller platformula enabled the first truly social commerce experience in the market.
• Facebook social platformula: The social network/utility on track to connect 1 billion users by 2012, and surpass Yahoo in display advertising in 2011, netting 20 plus percent of the display ad market. Facebook is now expanding its web and mobile developer outreach and driving new cloud infrastructure innovation.
• Google search platformula: The search advertising ecosystem capturing 65% of the U.S. market with a 4-fold advantage over the nearest competitor, and with strong product line extension in browsers, cloud email, productivity apps, video, mobile devices, cloud developer platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and more. Google's paid search ecosystem also supports an affiliate network of content partners that drive 31% of its overall revenue.
• Microsoft Windows PC platformula: The dominant desktop and notebook PC OEM standard globally established during the rise of the IBM clone industry in the 1980's and 1990's. The PC OEM platformula provided Microsoft with an opportunity for market extension into productivity applications, browsers, local area networks, web servers, mobile devices and cloud platform-as-a-service (Azure). It is estimated that for every dollar of revenue realized by Microsoft, a significant multiple of that goes to their OEM, developer and channel partners.
• Red Hat Linux platformula: The leading pure-play commercial ecosystem in open source Linux. Red Hat is on a $1billion dollar annual revenue run rate as of 2011. Red Hat Linux has now diversified into adjacent product categories and maintains a robust network of technology, ISV and solutions partners, as well as supporting the ongoing work of the open source community. The company now also offers cloud platform-as-a-service (PaaS), i.e. its OpenShift offering.
• VMware virtualization platformula: VMware leads the dominant ecosystem in virtualization platforms with more than 250,000 customers and 25,000 technology and channel partners. Based on this platformula, VMware has entered multiple markets adjacent to virtualization, as well as an open cloud platform-as-a-service offering supporting multiple languages and development siloes.

While each of the leading vendor ecosystems listed above faced their own unique sets of market development challenges, they all share a common lifecycle of market dominance or 'superpower dNA pattern' that enabled them to establish the leading product and partner success models in their respective markets.

Platformula strategy is the way to embed these shared lessons and superpower dNA in your business at every stage in the development of your product and partner marketing roadmap.

By incorporating platformula strategy into their product visions and partner marketing roadmaps, new breed ISVs in the PaaS, SaaS, mobile and social segments will be in the best position to capitalize on the cloud adoption bandwagon and position themselves for long term market success.

To arrange for your briefing on platformula strategy, and how it can help your business win in the age of the cloud superpowers, please contact us at PlatformulaGroup@gmail.com.