One of the core sales pitches of cloud computing has been the ability to avoid the vendor lock-in of old on-premises and appliance-based computing. With Broadcom acquiring VMware for $61bn, and its track record of ruffling a lot of VMware users’ feathers, the supposed flexibility of cloud-based virtualization is about to be tested. It seems certain that many VMware customers are going to jump ship. Broadcom’s corporate strategy has been outlined to investors, and it intends to focus on around 600 large customers that are worst positioned to churn away to rivals. Quite literally cornering its market, Broadcom is happy to let smaller customers fall away, with anecdotes suggesting it hikes prices in order to get that ball…