A smart Windows partner would step in to co-design and contribute technology around a core feature in windows, to make sure they had what they needed from the p

A smart Windows partner would step in to co-design and contribute technology around a core feature in windows, to make sure they had what they needed from the platform while still having a lot of value-added sale. The disk defragmenter included with Windows was somewhat lousy, but it gave OS hooks needed for other tools to do live defragmentations. The problem is that in both the consumer and enterprise spaces, underlying disk storage maintenance was just a checkbox - you had to sell any specialized version as part of a performance and antivirus suite. Citrix also did something similar with Windows Terminal Services. Before terminal services, Citrix had to maintain a Windows NT source license just to be able to manage all of the required OS hooks. Microsoft used Spyglass Mosaic as the foundation for Internet Explorer 1, and Direct3D was from an acquired company called RenderMorphics. Apple of course does something similar - see their acquisitions of Siri, Shazam, Testflight and Workflow. They are stories around Steve Jobs trying to acquire DropBox pretty early in its history as well.