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Topgolf saved over $11.3 million after leaving VMware

13 October 2026 at 22:33

Topgolf’s VMware costs were going to increase by 400 percent under Broadcom. To avoid that cost, the sports entertainment company moved 12,000 virtual machines (VMs) to VergeIO’s VergeOS and has saved over $11 million so far.

Before migrating, Topgolf’s VMware connection “ran very deep,” Scott Forehand, Topgolf’s global infrastructure manager, told Ars Technica.

Topgolf has over 100 locations worldwide featuring interactive golf games with real-time shot tracking and digital analytics. The company used vSphere and ESXi for decades and started using VxRail, the hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) platform that VMware co-engineered with Dell, in 2017. Topgolf employees previously participated in numerous VMware customer councils and have been interviewed for books on how Topgolf used vSphere and Horizon (now Omnissa Horizon), per Forehand, who is a leader of the Dallas/Ft. Worth VMware User Group.

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Licensing costs driving 90 percent of VMware users to explore options: Survey

6 October 2026 at 13:00

VMware customers face multiple obstacles as they rethink their virtualization strategy to reduce dependence on VMware.

Today, Rimini Street published its “2026 IT Virtualization Survey – What’s Next for VMware Users.” The survey examined 300 organizations worldwide that use VMware.

Notably, Rimini sells third-party support for VMware and other software, including Oracle and SAP. That means there’s an incentive for Rimini to portray VMware users as experiencing obstacles. However, the survey was also conducted by a third-party research company, Unisphere Research, and the results align with other recent reports about VMware customers.

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“Trust, not features, is the real deficit”: VMware tries to appease SMBs

4 September 2026 at 18:35

For many small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs), VMware has become too expensive.

Broadcom’s acquisition of the virtualization firm brought the end of perpetual license sales and the arrival of pricey, stacked, subscription-based bundles that priced out many SMBs.

The most obvious is VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), VMware’s flagship private cloud bundle that has been Broadcom’s primary focus since taking over VMware. Many SMBs find that VCF is unaffordable and stuffed with unnecessary offerings. However, numerous customers have reported online that VMware sales representatives have still pushed them toward VCF, with some claiming that sales reps have told them that the lower-priced edition of VMware’s virtualization platform, vSphere Standard, was no longer available.

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VMware migration reduces Tottenham Hotspur's licensing fees by 85 percent

3 September 2026 at 19:58

Tottenham Hotspur, a professional soccer team that’s part of the Premier League, has saved over 85 percent in licensing fees by replacing its stadium's VMware instance with Hewlett-Packard Enterprise’s (HPE’s) Morpheus VM Essentials (VME) virtualization software.

Tottenham hasn’t disclosed which VMware products it used or how much it previously paid the Broadcom firm.

The soccer organization confirmed this week to The Register that it has moved its stadium's server, storage, and networking infrastructure to HPE solutions delivered through HPE's hybrid cloud management platform, GreenLake. That is all “underpinned by" VME and HPE's OpsRamp software for hybrid and multi-cloud environments, Rob Pickering, Tottenham's CTO, told the publication, with HPE in charge of the hybrid cloud-managed service.

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Sheetz is quitting VMware, migrating 11,000 virtual machines

15 July 2026 at 22:41

Sheetz, a US convenience store chain, is moving its 838 locations off VMware.

Sheetz has used VMware virtualization across two Dell R440/R450-series servers at each of its locations since 2019. Now it’s migrating 12 to 14 virtual machines (VMs) in each of its stores from VMware vSphere to StorMagic’s SvHCI, “with an additional two VMs to be replaced over the coming months to transition from Windows 10 to Windows 11,” Scott Robertson, infrastructure team manager at Sheetz, told Ars Technica via email. Ultimately, Sheetz will move about 11,000 VMs from Broadcom's virtualization platform. Sheetz is still running the original Dell server hardware.

So far, Sheetz has finished migrating more than 600 stores, averaging 200 per month, according to a company announcement today. Sheetz should be finished with the migration in four months, the announcement said.

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Sheetz is quitting VMware, migrating 11,000 virtual machines

15 July 2026 at 22:41

Sheetz, a US convenience store chain, is moving its 838 locations off VMware.

Sheetz has used VMware virtualization across two Dell R440/R450-series servers at each of its locations since 2019. Now it’s migrating 12 to 14 virtual machines (VMs) in each of its stores from VMware vSphere to StorMagic’s SvHCI, “with an additional two VMs to be replaced over the coming months to transition from Windows 10 to Windows 11,” Scott Robertson, infrastructure team manager at Sheetz, told Ars Technica via email. Ultimately, Sheetz will move about 11,000 VMs from Broadcom's virtualization platform. Sheetz is still running the original Dell server hardware.

So far, Sheetz has finished migrating more than 600 stores, averaging 200 per month, according to a company announcement today. Sheetz should be finished with the migration in four months, the announcement said.

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Allstate accuses Broadcom of auditing it because it quit VMware, CA

Allstate Insurance Company has accused Broadcom of haphazardly issuing audits against it because the insurance firm decided not to renew its contracts with VMware and CA Technologies.

The allegations were made in relation to a lawsuit that VMware filed against Allstate in December 2025, according to The Register. In the complaint, Broadcom alleges that Allstate failed to comply with license audits, which Broadcom claims its contract with Allstate requires.

In a June 12 filing, Allstate suggested that Broadcom issued the audits in response to Allstate deciding to end business with its companies. Allstate's statement reads:

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T-Mobile moving tens of thousands of virtual machines off VMware amid lawsuit

T-Mobile is asking a New York court to rule that Broadcom was contractually obligated to continue supporting its VMware perpetual licenses.

In its complaint, T-Mobile said it has tens of thousands of virtual machines using VMware software across approximately 303,140 CPU cores. It also said that it was migrating off VMware but noted the time-consuming and technical challenges involved in migrating over 1,000 applications.

It filed its lawsuit, which was first reported by The Register today, in the Supreme Court of the State of New York in August 2025 (PDF).

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Tesco moving 40,000 server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's “abusive conduct”

17 June 2026 at 20:43

Tesco, a retail conglomerate headquartered in the United Kingdom, is moving 40,000 server workloads off of VMware amid "abusive conduct" from Broadcom, recent legal filings claim.

Tesco filed a lawsuit in the UK’s High Court against Broadcom alleging breach of contract last year. According to a September report from The Register, the lawsuit claimed that in January 2021, Tesco bought perpetual licenses for VMware’s vSphere Foundation and Cloud Foundation, a subscription to VMware Tanzu, plus support services until 2026, with the option to extend support for four additional years.

But when Broadcom took over VMware in November 2023, it would not honor the deal and instead tried to get Tesco to pay “excessive and inflated prices for virtualization software for which Tesco has already paid” and would not allow it to buy support services for its perpetually licensed software without buying “duplicative subscription-based licenses for those same Software products," the initial complaint read, The Register reported at the time.

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Tesco moving 40,000 server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's “abusive conduct”

17 June 2026 at 20:43

Tesco, a retail conglomerate headquartered in the United Kingdom, is moving 40,000 server workloads off of VMware amid "abusive conduct" from Broadcom, recent legal filings claim.

Tesco filed a lawsuit in the UK’s High Court against Broadcom alleging breach of contract last year. According to a September report from The Register, the lawsuit claimed that in January 2021, Tesco bought perpetual licenses for VMware’s vSphere Foundation and Cloud Foundation, a subscription to VMware Tanzu, plus support services until 2026, with the option to extend support for four additional years.

But when Broadcom took over VMware in November 2023, it would not honor the deal and instead tried to get Tesco to pay “excessive and inflated prices for virtualization software for which Tesco has already paid” and would not allow it to buy support services for its perpetually licensed software without buying “duplicative subscription-based licenses for those same Software products," the initial complaint read, The Register reported at the time.

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Year of free HPE software a “step in the correct direction” in VMware rivalry

16 June 2026 at 23:11

Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) new virtualization software promotion will likely pique the interest of end users and resellers who are unhappy with Broadcom's pricing of VMware.

During its HPE Discover event in Las Vegas this week, HPE announced that customers could use its “HPE Morpheus Software—VM Essentials” offering for free for “up to one year,” per a press release. HPE’s website describes its virtualization platform as a “VMware alternative.” It includes a hardware virtual machine (HVM) hypervisor and unified management and lets users "manage VMware ESXi and HVM clusters from one console and migrate when you’re ready,” HPE’s website says.

“New VM Essentials customers can receive up to one free year of licenses for VM Essentials, a year of HPE Zerto for $1 to support non-disruptive migration to HPE virtual machines, and 0 percent interest on software through HPE Financial Services,” HPE’s announcement reads, referring to HPE’s group for helping IT teams manage funding.

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Year of free HPE software a “step in the correct direction” in VMware rivalry

16 June 2026 at 23:11

Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) new virtualization software promotion will likely pique the interest of end users and resellers who are unhappy with Broadcom's pricing of VMware.

During its HPE Discover event in Las Vegas this week, HPE announced that customers could use its “HPE Morpheus Software—VM Essentials” offering for free for “up to one year,” per a press release. HPE’s website describes its virtualization platform as a “VMware alternative.” It includes a hardware virtual machine (HVM) hypervisor and unified management and lets users "manage VMware ESXi and HVM clusters from one console and migrate when you’re ready,” HPE’s website says.

“New VM Essentials customers can receive up to one free year of licenses for VM Essentials, a year of HPE Zerto for $1 to support non-disruptive migration to HPE virtual machines, and 0 percent interest on software through HPE Financial Services,” HPE’s announcement reads, referring to HPE’s group for helping IT teams manage funding.

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