VMWare has been dying a death of 1000 cuts for years. It's been passed around to now the third owner. They created an entire market and have been watching it erode away.
This is exactly the problem with optimizing metrics though. It seems like they’re getting more money from less customers but it puts them at might higher risk that those big customers will churn and tank the company which also increases as the price goes up as it will eventually hit a point where they can find something cheaper.
[1] https://www.netcials.com/financial-revenue-history-usa/11246...