Broadcom is a leader in the wired network, wireless network, enterprise storage, and industrial automation end markets. With the advent of IoT devices generating more data than people and the rise of machine learning, the company operates at the silicon level to advance mass transformation through better connections among devices, people, data, and storage.

In the past 10 years, through organic growth and acquisitions, Broadcom revenues have multiplied nearly 1,000%. At the same time, with a steady focus on controlling costs, it has increased its margins and propelled itself to a top 5 ranking among global semiconductor firms in the 2018 Q1 IHS Markit Competitive Landscape rankings.

As it embarked on this stage of growth, Broadcom sought strategic relationships with key players in IT infrastructure, storage, and productivity tools. The company needed solutions that would support revenue growth by accelerating product development and aid margin growth by speeding consolidation of acquired operations.

At the time Gmail adoption by large enterprises was limited. Broadcom was one of the first billion-dollar, enterprise companies to use Google Workspace on a large scale. “Google was a great choice strategically, because we knew it could scale meteorically with us,” explains Andy Nallappan, Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Global Information Technology for Broadcom.

The switch from on-premises email to Gmail for the 3,500 employees Broadcom had at the time saved the company $1.5 million, which was just the beginning of the savings realized over the past several years as the company expanded on a robust cloud infrastructure.

6x volume and still one manager

Broadcom provides Gmail accounts to many contractors and partners in order to make collaboration easier and more secure. Today, there are over 20,000 Broadcom Gmail accounts—a volume growth of nearly six times over 10 years—all still overseen by just one person, thanks to ease of management. For deep technical support, MediaAgility, a Google Cloud Premier Partner, has helped build in automation, supports ongoing training, and provides extra assistance for onboardings and other bursts of activity during mergers, acquisitions, and restructurings.

“Who can run email best? It's Google and they're doing it. I don't have to monitor Google, because Google is very much in the public eye. The whole world already looks to Google to keep things humming,” says Stanley.

Propelling teamwork

Employees often use a combination of Drive and Gmail to share large files by including a link to a file on Drive, instead of attaching a file to an email. The delivery of the shared information is just as seamless, without concern about whether a recipient can receive oversized attachments, which is always a worry with recipients outside the company who are not on Gmail.

Broadcom employees like how easy it is to collaborate with Sheets and Docs. Team members can update the status of a project in real time on a project tracker, while they are in their team meetings. “Keeping meeting minutes on Docs and Sheets has become extremely popular because it’s easy to share the information from a discussion, including links to pertinent resources on Drive. It saves time and helps keep information organized,” Stanley says.

The company introduced Google Team Drive to address concerns about access by other members of a project team to key documents when the owner of those documents leaves the company. With documents on Team Drive, members of a work group can easily store, search, and access key files.

The company’s lab employees are avid users of Sites. “We have 400 lab teams using Sites. They have a lot of data they’re working with, and it’s a great way for our engineers to share test results, promoting further collaboration across teams,” says Stanley.

For action item tracking, many employees are using Keep. It’s an elegantly simple tool for collaborative checklists, updated in real time across devices.

Jamboard is also a well-liked tool for developing and sharing whiteboard pictures and notes. “Previously, our managers were always panicked over security, worried about people taking pictures of designs, because you don’t know where those could end up. With Jamboard, a manager can better control who has access to drawings,” Stanley says.

M&A integrations without disruption

The advantages are especially pronounced when mergers and acquisitions occur. On the very day Avago closed its acquisition of Broadcom Corporation in 2016, the new company changed its primary domain from AvagoTech.com to Broadcom.com. “In the span of 12 hours, we ported nearly 10,000 email accounts to Broadcom, while also transitioning 14,000 accounts from an on-premises email server to Gmail. It’s amazing to start realizing these operational efficiencies from day one of the combined operations. We couldn’t have done it without Google,” says Andy.

For a small IT team focused on meeting the needs of a large, diverse company, the move to Google Workspace has been advantageous because IT no longer has to manage large server farms. Instead they can monitor a cloud-based environment that scales seamlessly and helps power growth. “I take pride in working with our management team on how to more quickly integrate the companies we acquire so we can meet strategic objectives,” Andy says.

With the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) taking effect, the Broadcom team gains peace of mind by standardizing on Google Cloud given Google’s commitment to support constantly changing requirements.

“It helps us a great deal that Google is ever-evolving, has longevity, and takes data privacy and security extremely seriously,” says Andy.