Is this to say they acquire other companies for their customers?
since then we have not been too good at innovating, so we buy companies technology + customersfor the explicit purpose of soaking up as much of their existing revenue as we can, to pad the falling sales of our databases, hw etc
then, inevitably, after we have abused our relationship with those customers and the sales reps on those accounts, we... buy more companies and start the process all over again (see netsuite), rather than fixing the abuse (see hyperion, peoplesoft, jdedwards)