I am a big fan of Joe Bentzel's approach to ISV growth & success, and his column today says it all!

Excerpted in Full:

OK. It’s a new year and what better way to start off the new year than to stay stuck in the past year.
Hence the First Annual Asymmetric Marketing Awards to those software and web players who most successfully:
a. Capitalized on the market momentum of an incumbent leader to grow their own business;
b. Engaged in cross-category market expansion, leveraging one asset into new markets; or
c. Grew their natural (customer-sanctioned) monopoly at the expense of their competitors.
So here’s my top 10 A-marketers for 2007, with me as the sole judge in the competition. (Seriously…What’s the point of having a marketing blog if you can’t pontificate?) I’m going to use the David Letterman model and start at the end of the list working forward to Number One.
10. EqualLogic: In 2007, Dell paid well north of a billion dollars for iSCSI innovator EqualLogic. While EqualLogic's public face to the world is that of a storage appliance provider, it is their focus on providing a seamless storage experience for Microsoft Exchange and SQL, and their focus on aligning with software superpowers that enabled their revenue growth and perceived leadership in iSCSI. Look for this trend of application-focused hardware, and hardware blended with software to grow in 2008.
9. Novell: In 2007, Novell began to benefit from their interoperability deal with Microsoft, including a revenue commitment of $240 million. This was smart asymmetric marketing on the part of Novell, i.e. to leverage the MS installed base to drive a Linux open source product into the market, and position themselves vis-à-vis Red Hat and others based on their interoperability with MS. While Novell as a company is still unprofitable, continuing down the asymmetric marketing path with Microsoft can only help them in their turnaround efforts.
8. Akamai: In 2007, Akamai's revenue for the first 3 quarters of the year exceeds 2006 revenue for all 4 quarters. They continue to practice asymmetric marketing by successfully attaching their application acceleration and edge network services to market creation initiatives of the software superpowers (MS Silverlight, Adobe Flash and SAP enterprise SOA) as well as to leading web properties (MySpace). Akamai is also one of the best examples of ‘Software plus services’ on the planet.
7. Facebook: By landing a $240 million equity investment from Microsoft, in addition to partnering with MS as their exclusive advertising partner, Facebook deserves to be among the top 10 asymmetric marketers of 2007. Their initiative to market their social networking site as a 'platform' for Web 2.0 developers is also a feather in their cap.
6: Salesforce.com: In 2007, Salesforce moved forward beyond the on-demand CRM category with it's PaaS (platform-as-a-service) offering, Force.com, and its initiative to create an army of 3rd party software developers. In addition SFDC began to aggressively partner with Google around the "Salesforce for Google AdWords" offering. With 2009 revenue forecasted at $1billion, Salesforce.com is clearly beginning to take more than a few plays from the Microsoft and Oracle superpower playbooks.
5. VMware: One of the most street-smart software companies in a long, long time, VMware has leveraged its relationships with EMC, Intel and other incumbent market leaders to grow a billion dollar plus software business, go public at a killer valuation, and emerge as a rising superpower in its own right. Virtualization is their ball to carry or fumble going forward, depending on how they handle the competitive challenges to come.
4. Adobe: The Acrobat natural monopolists broke through the 3 billion in annual revenue mark on the strength of their Creative Suite, proving that 12 years after the browser wars, it is possible to rise to and remain a software superpower in markets dominated by companies 15X their size. And their ever-expanding Flash ubiquity proves that they understand how to drive cross-category market momentum, a key indicator of superpower status.
3. Microsoft: In 2007, the original Redmondistas began to put some meat on their Software Plus Services vision, fought their way through the rolling Vista launch, launched new initiatives in Unified Communications, Security, Storage, Rich Internet Applications, Office Business Apps (OBAs) and more, while acquiring some assets to help their still-struggling online search and advertising war with Google. Their asymmetric marketing muscle across multiple categories enabled them to chalk up a killer Q1 2008 quarterly number. They remain Numero Uno in many, many categories (and my personal poster child for what asymmetric marketing is all about) but in the post-Gates era, they will have to ratchet up their game and re-invigorate their culture in an age of continuous superpower rivalry.
2. Oracle: Hats off to Larry Ellison. His high risk strategy of 37 acquisitions (including PeopleSoft & Siebel) over the past 3 years began to pay big dividends in 2007 relative to their head to head competition with SAP. In the words of Oracle President, Charles Phillips. “We like our growth strategy of expanding beyond ERP into high-end industry specific vertical software in contrast to SAP’s strategy of moving down market to sell ERP systems to small companies.” Cross-category expansion focused on strategic lock-in---An asymmetric marketing strategy for the ages.
1. Google: All’s NOT fair in the age of the software superpowers, so Steve Ballmer’s oft-quoted remark that search rival Google is a ‘one trick pony’, can be chalked up to brass knuckles combat PR. Unfortunately for my main man and Redmondista role model Steve B, Google’s ‘one trick’, i.e. ad-sponsored search, happens to be pretty freakin’ awesome. Hence Google’s selection to occupy the number one spot on the Redmondista Blog’s first annual asymmetric marketing awards. Throughout 2007, Google was clearly laying the foundation for tricks two, three and four with its Doubleclick acquisition, its YouTube video ubiquity, and partner/developer initiatives in social networking and mobile software designed to recruit an army of 3rd party developers to the Google standard. It remains to be seen whether Yahoo and/or Microsoft will develop a ‘category regime change’ strategy capable of toppling the Googleplexers in search before the cross-category juggernaut leaves the station. I keep giving them free hints but they don’t seem to paying attention. Oh well, so much for the value of free advice.
Apologies to all those who didn't make the 2007 list. Buying bulk quantities of my book and forcing your marketing and sales organization to apply the ideas contained therein may help you get ready for the 2008 awards.