Broadcom has obtained clearance from the European Union (EU), plus a provisional greenlight from UK antitrust authorities, to proceed with its proposed $61 billion takeover of virtualization pioneer VMware, after guaranteeing it would preserve interoperability of the latter’s software with its own rivals, particularly Marvell. This has unleashed Broadcom to expand on its grand ambition of creating a new hyperscaler capable of taking on the established giants such as AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. While network operators and streaming enterprises might welcome another major hyperscaler, Broadcom’s ambition looks optimistic, with consolidation of VMware itself a more likely outcome, as a second tier hyperscaler armed with some more powerful networking capabilities. It will likely be more of a niche provider…