Topgolf saved over $11.3 million after leaving VMware
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Topgolf has saved over $11.3 million by migrating its infrastructure away from VMware to VergeIO’s VergeOS platform. The sports entertainment company made this decision after Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware led to a projected 400 percent increase in licensing costs and the discontinuation of perpetual licenses. Topgolf moved approximately 12,000 virtual machines from its legacy VxRail environment to Dell PowerEdge servers running VergeOS. This transition allowed the company to reduce hardware spending by 87 percent and software costs by 77 percent while securing a more favorable five-year enterprise license agreement. A key driver for the migration was VergeOS’s multi-tenancy feature, which enabled Topgolf to segregate clusters by time zone and simplify management at scale. The project also involved modernizing their gaming architecture by shifting processing to edge game panels and adopting Kubernetes. Although the team faced minor integration challenges with third-party tools like Rubrik, they successfully pivoted to Veeam for specific security needs. Topgolf expects to be completely off VMware by early December 2026.
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