Conventional wisdom suggests buying before building software. However, as an increasing proportion of product and service value is digital — think of a naval vessel's operation system (Windows for Warships) or of the premium for organic food with certified provenance — there is much greater scope for a firm's application development professionals to build highly competitive digital differentiation into its offering. The secret to releasing resources for digital differentiation lies in standardizing the support for context or nondifferentiating processes on packages, centralizing and virtualizing their management and support, and eventually outsourcing them.