Trellix: Balancing innovation and security with real-time collaboration and generative AI

Company-wide change management requires careful planning to execute smoothly, especially when the change involves a platform every employee uses daily. Once Trellix decided to move to Workspace, it took a four-phased approach to transitioning its teams off its previous solution. "The toughest part of a migration isn't the technical work — it's the change management," says Ashley Hatter, Trellix's senior director of enterprise technology. "The real challenge is driving adoption, so we approached it in phases with a strong change management plan to ensure everyone was ready."

The team began by first moving its enterprise technology and operations teams, so they could absorb everything they needed to shepherd the larger rollout. "We would say that we were 'drinking our own champagne,' so we wanted to make sure that we were giving the rest of the organization the best bottle of champagne that was out there," Hatter adds. After bringing the executive leadership on board, the company added its Google Guides to Workspace — dedicated adoption leaders within the organization who could help support the rest of the team. Its Google Guides were equipped with a Google Site full of training resources, including videos, user guides, and best practices to share across the organization. 

The company celebrated the global rollout with a go-live event to celebrate a larger cultural shift within Trellix. "Celebrating the migration to Google Workspace was important for us because we wanted to emphasize this change was more than an email address changing; we were setting out to do something cool and exciting together," Hatter shares. "We were making the leap to being connected to our teams on any device, anytime, anywhere." This strategic rollout fostered the exact excitement Hatter and her team hoped for: Trellix currently has a greater than 90% adoption rate across daily Workspace users. 

With the technical migration complete, Trellix continued its ongoing change management processes to encourage further adoption. This included embedding Google Meet hardware into its conference rooms. "We've completely transformed how we collaborate through our meeting rooms. The software and hardware both just work," says Gene Molloy, vice president of global workspace at Trellix. "The less I hear about obstacles or issues, the better our team is doing, and knowing that Google Workspace works puts a lot of people at ease."

This simplicity and reliability has led directly to Trellix team members experimenting with building their own solutions with AppSheet. "AppSheet allows all of our employees to contribute to transforming work for the whole company," Molloy says. "For example, we developed an in-house service status page that's connected to customer service tickets, so we can automate task assignments and serve customers faster." 

Prior to Gemini becoming available for all Google Workspace users, Trellix also tested a generative AI pilot program to further encourage employees to build and share their own solutions. Having a generative AI solution built into a secure, enterprise platform that the team uses every day helped the team remove potentially vulnerable third-party generative AI tools without slowing its teams' desire to innovate. Everyone from senior leaders and sales to back office operations uses Gemini to take notes during Meet calls, draft emails in Gmail, and even create formulas in Google Sheets and Looker Studio. "Gemini being part of Google Workspace's DNA continues to extend the product beyond what its capabilities are today," Molloy adds. "I used to store my Looker formulas in a Google Doc, but now I can just ask Gemini for them. What used to take me a half hour to do manually, I can now do in five minutes."

As the team continues to embrace Workspace and evolve its processes, Trellix's leadership is equally excited to continue working closely with Google as the platform grows. "The great thing about Workspace is that it's constantly evolving. It's a single platform that seamlessly integrates with everything, so our teams feel really motivated," says Hatter. "Their innovation and creativity sparks when they constantly see all these new enhancements."

These enhancements, including the introduction of Gemini into Workspace, have helped to reinforce the benefits of collaborating with Google to continue to support Trellix's vision. "Technology is always changing, and as a technology leader, I love that," Anstett adds. "What I love about Workspace is that it really touches the entire company. We use it together, and everyone can see that change can be fun and create better work." By integrating new solutions and AI features into Trellix's company culture, the team has more time to focus on more impactful work and deliver more value to its customers.