New products run on infrastructure the company already paid for, or on a runtime the customer already deployed: an agent on the customer's machines, a global network, a data pipeline.
How Platformization works
When the second product needs no new deployment, the customer's cost of adding it is mostly the price, and the company's cost of building it is mostly the software. Each added product makes the installed runtime more valuable.
How companies won with Platformization
From the win chains in Strategy Canon case studies: what the winner did, and what its rival did at the same step.
vs. Cylance
CrowdStrike
Full scope on one agent: antivirus replacement, then modules
What it did
Cylance's marketing opened antivirus replacement, so CrowdStrike rushed Falcon Prevent out (Feb 2017)
Cylance
Two products (PROTECT, OPTICS); about $130M revenue when sold to BlackBerry for $1.4B (2018-19)
What runtime or infrastructure is already in place, which later products run on it without a new deployment, and when did they launch?
Who names it
Author
What they call it / where it appears
Nikesh Arora +
Platformization
Thompson
Cloudflare's disruption: a network already paid for, reused for new products
Note. Distinct from Platform Strategy in Intent, which opens a product to third parties. Later products that required new agents, infrastructure or separate deployments are absent.