Broadcom is selling VMware’s End-User Computing (EUC) Division to KKR for $4 billion, continuing its efforts to shed what Broadcom CEO Hock Tan described as noncore VMware assets.

The deal will see KKR acquire the Broadcom division that is focused on providing digital workplace services. This includes its Horizon desktop and application virtualization platform, and Workspace One unified endpoint management platform.

KKR said the EUC business will become a standalone company after the deal closes “with greater access to growth capital and a dedicated strategic focus on empowering customers and partners worldwide with innovative digital workspace solutions.” That division will also keep its current management team, led by Shankar Iyer.

“We see great potential to grow the EUC division by empowering this talented team and investing in product innovation, delivering excellence for customers and building strategic partnerships,” Bradley Brown, managing director at KKR, noted in a statement.

Gartner recently ranked VMware’s Horizon platformin the “leaders” category of its “Magic Quadrant for Desktop as a Service.” This was alongside rivals Microsoft and Citrix.

KKR had previously acquired SD-WAN and secure access service edge (SASE) provider Barracuda Networks from Thoma Bravo in 2022; partnered with Global Infrastructure Partners to purchase global data center real estate investment trust CyrusOnefor $15 billion in 2021; and was part of a consortium that took enterprise data cloud provider Cloudera private in 2021.

Broadcom’s selling price came in significantly higher than expected. The company had stated plans to sell VMware’s EUC business and its Carbon Black security business, which combined were expected to generate $2 billion in proceeds.

“We’ll find good homes for them because there are a lot of very interested parties who are more than happy to take those assets,” Tan told investors during Broadcom’s most recent earnings call.

Once divested, Tan said, Broadcom will refocus “VMware on its core business of creating private and hybrid cloud environments among large enterprises globally and divesting non-core assets,” Tan said.

Tan noted that the “core” business includes a focus on VMware’s Cloud Foundation (VCF), which is its full-stack software package targeted at enterprises to virtualize their on-premises data centers. Broadcom recently altered the licensing and distribution model of its VMware services in a move some noted are targeted at squeezing more revenues from large enterprise customers.

“Broadcom is very clear, and I gotta give them credit, they’re being very clear and very consistent on what’s important to them, and what’s important to them is the enterprise,” Bruce Kornfeld, who is currently chief marketing and product officer at StorMagic, but spent nine years at Dell when it owned VMware, told SDxCentral. “They want big customers and they want to make as much money as they can from big customers all day long.”