The migration that moved 12,000 virtual machines
Topgolf, the global sports entertainment company operating over 100 interactive venues in the United States, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, has completed the migration of its entire virtualization infrastructure — 12,000 virtual machines — from VMware to VergeOS by VergeIO. The result: a combined saving of over $11.3 million in infrastructure costs, achieved without any additional hardware expenditure.
The company, a subsidiary of Topgolf Callaway Brands (NYSE: MODG), began the process in mid-2025 when a change in VMware pricing by Broadcom forced a complete reassessment of its virtualization strategy. What started as a response to a 400% increase in licensing costs became a deep restructuring of the company's IT architecture.
From six-node to three-node clusters: VergeOS efficiency
The previous setup was impressive in scale: Topgolf operated Dell VxRail clusters with six nodes at each location. To maintain the same workload after migration, just three nodes per site were needed with VergeOS, halving the amount of hardware required without compromising performance.
"At Topgolf, technology is the heart of our player experience," Scott Forehand, Topgolf's manager of global infrastructure, told Ars Technica. "VergeOS gave us the control, flexibility, and resilience we need at every venue — and with VergeIO, we found a partner that understands how we operate and what we need to move fast."
The comparison was straightforward: Forehand noted that the money Topgolf saved by moving to VergeOS isn't typical, because the company has larger needs than most organizations. "Comparatively, it's much more when you look at the cost of a solution similar to the configuration of the old VxRail solution we installed."
Three compounding factors made the difference: the licensing delta — VMware costs disappeared on day one of the migration —, hardware deferral, since VergeOS's superior efficiency allowed existing servers to handle more workloads, and RAM and flash savings, as VergeOS runs at just 2% to 3% platform overhead versus the double-digit percentages of VMware.
The end of third-party backup
A particularly notable point was the elimination of third-party backup software and hardware. Topgolf validated VergeOS's integrated data protection capabilities — including ioClone, ioGuardian, and ioReplicate — and determined the system was robust enough to replace external backup entirely.
This eliminated another recurring cost line and reduced operational complexity, especially relevant for a company managing hundreds of distributed international locations, each with real-time critical workloads.
Automation as the engine
VergeOS's API-first design enabled Topgolf to automate infrastructure tasks — including deployment, maintenance, and recovery after power outages — that previously required 30 to 45 minutes of manual effort per site. With automation, processes that once consumed half an hour or more were reduced to near-instant operations, freeing the infrastructure team to focus on value-added initiatives.
Topgolf expects to be completely off VMware by the second week of December 2026.
The broader context: why enterprises are leaving VMware
The Topgolf case is not isolated. For more than two years, the enterprise virtualization market has been grappling with the consequences of Broadcom's acquisition of VMware, closed in November 2023. Since then, licensing prices have skyrocketed — some customers reported increases of up to 1,250% for the same services — and the licensing model was radically restructured, consolidating more than 160 products into single subscription bundles.
A survey by Unisphere Research, published in October 2026 and conducted between December 2025 and February 2026 with 269 executives at VMware-using organizations, found that nine out of ten customers are actively considering migrating to alternatives. Seventy-three percent cited cost savings as their top priority.
The main barriers to change, according to the study, are operational complexity (40%), multi-vendor management challenges (38%), the need to reduce the attack surface (37%), and the demand for specific technical skills (37%). Only 48% of respondents plan to migrate to VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), Broadcom's preferred platform.
VMware itself tried to reverse the trend with the VCF 9.1 launch, including memory tiering features (promising up to 40% server cost reduction), global vSAN deduplication, and integrated security. According to Yves Sandfort, CEO of Comdivision, a distribution partner, "people are starting to understand that VCF can replace not just the hypervisor, but other silos they had before, like storage, networking, and security."
But Broadcom's strategy appears to be creating an increasingly fertile market for competitors like VergeIO, Scale Computing, and others selling the exact promise of eliminating VMware dependency — which explains Scale Computing's 400% growth in enterprise sales in 2024.
Where enterprise virtualization is headed
The Topgolf case illustrates a broader shift: virtualization is no longer a commodity but a strategic architectural decision. Companies running distributed infrastructure across hundreds of locations — whether a sports entertainment chain, a healthcare system, or a retail network — are realizing that choosing the hypervisor defines not just costs but the company's operational agility.
When Topgolf's $11.3 million savings were calculated, they did not include market hardware cost adjustments — which, considering current server prices, would be even higher. What the company proved is that, with the right hypervisor, existing infrastructure can deliver much more than the previous standard, without additional capital investment.
Topgolf's migration to VergeOS is an example of how a cost increase can become the catalyst for a transformation that, once completed, makes it impossible to go back.
Sources: Ars Technica, Business Wire, The Register, CRN
✓ Independent sources cross-checked and verified before publishing
