Broadcom has defended its VMware bundle price hikes after concerns from legacy customers that the subscriptions force them to pay for software offerings they may not use or want.

Last week, the unveiling of VMware’s latest VCF platform update came amid increasing broader cost issues that have arisen in the wake of Broadcom’s acquisition, with unease over the cost direction of VMware services in the shadow of Broadcom’s licensing changes.

In comments to The Register in the aftermath of the update, Joe Baguley, Broadcom's EMEA CTO, claimed talk of costs “don't play out when we actually get to sit down with the customer and talk to them about their situation, what they need, and what we're going to do with them.”

During the company’s most recent earnings call, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan claimed more than 87 percent of VMware’s 10,000 largest customers had signed up for the new subscription pricing model, a figure Baguley backed.

“Initially, people might go 'all the prices have gone up,' but those 87 percent of people that have renewed with us have renewed because they've chosen VCF as their strategy going forward,” he said.

“When we sit down with customers and have a conversation about the cost that they expect, based on that and the value they're going to get out of it, that's the key thing.”

Industry analysts have previously noted that some of VMware’s legacy customers have integrations that make it challenging to migrate to new VCF offerings, especially if they’ve no need or want for some of the new software offerings.

Baguley acknowledged the update concerns and that some customers who have made the move aren’t using all the offerings available to them: “They had bits and pieces of things, maybe just vSphere and ... some of our automation tools.

“They're realizing when they get into the VCF product, what they can do with it that they couldn't do before; configuration management, security management, all the cost management, all the bits that they didn't buy before because they had another tool which already did that, but it didn't really because it wasn't integrated properly," Baguley said.

Pricing conundrums aside, Broadcom isn’t backing down on converting its legacy customers to the new pricing and licensing scheme.

CEO Tan recently suggested the firm was two-thirds of the way through renewals, with “probably have at least another year-plus, maybe a year-and-a-half to go” to get legacy users on board.