Combine the name of any technology company with “platform” or “ecosystem” in the search engine of your choice and you will get a sense of the maturity and scope of that company's product, platform, and ecosystem strategies. Even early-stage technology companies that don't have much of a strategy beyond issuing press releases are eager to announce an ecosystem partnership with a market leader in their industry. An August 2009 search for “Microsoft ecosystem” on the Bing search engine retrieved 6.4 million results. Most high-tech companies fall somewhere in-between Microsoft and new entrants in the scope of their ecosystem strategies. Like the concept of shaping a corporate value chain to create competitive advantage, an enterprise ecosystem has become a fundamental element in technology product development and distribution.

Applying product platform strategies to computer component design and software development gained favor in the 1990s as a way to keep up with rapid-fire technological advances and accelerating software-update cycles. Platform strategies allowed technology companies to attract more developers and component partners, to create more coherent product roadmaps, and to assure their technical and channel partners that the next generation of products would complement current development and sales plans and be compatible with their growing base of customer installations (McGrath, 1995; Salonen, 2004).