Topgolf has saved over $11.3 million in infrastructure costs by migrating 12,000 virtual machines from VMware to VergeIO's VergeOS platform, avoiding a projected 400 percent increase in licensing expenses after Broadcom's acquisition reshaped VMware's business model.
Broadcom discontinued perpetual VMware licenses and consolidated products into larger, pricier stock-keeping units. The shift forced Topgolf, which operates more than 100 venues globally, to rearchitect its on-premises infrastructure that powers real-time shot tracking and digital analytics across its interactive golf games.
The company had deep roots in VMware's ecosystem. Scott Forehand, Topgolf's global infrastructure manager, leads the Dallas/Ft. Worth VMware User Group and participates in customer councils. Topgolf deployed VxRail, the hyperconverged platform co-engineered by VMware and Dell, starting in 2017.
The economics, however, proved decisive. Forehand said the company "reduced or eliminated over $11.3 million in combined infrastructure costs prior to the adjustments in hardware cost in the market." Twenty Topgolf venues still run VxRail with VMware Cloud Foundation, with full migration expected by mid-December.
Topgolf's scale amplifies the savings. Forehand noted that the comparative advantage widens when pricing similar VxRail-equivalent configurations at current market rates. The company paired its software migration with a hardware refresh and architecture modernization.
VergeIO reports acquiring roughly 70 new customers per quarter, mostly migrating from VMware. George Crump, VergeIO's chief marketing officer, said customers typically move when facing license renewals, hardware refreshes, multi-site deployments, or multi-tenancy requirements. "Most customers who move from VMware see meaningful reductions in all three," Crump said, referring to software licensing, proprietary HCI appliances, and separate tools for data protection and replication.
