Hock Tan is very upfront with his strategy when acquiring these companies - he intends to extract the maximum from the top 500 customers, who are reliant on the

Hock Tan is very upfront with his strategy when acquiring these companies - he intends to extract the maximum from the top 500 customers, who are reliant on the product, while abandoning anyone below the 'margin line' he's drawn. As to why it happens - VMWare was incredibly bloated, spending less than 50% of their OPEX on R&D (compare to Broadcom's 80%). They had once created a good product, but the business wasn't working.