How Illumio Simplified Global IT Procurement With GroWrk
Illumio · Zero Trust Segmentation · Global device procurement with GroWrk
Illumio at a glance
Illumio is a leader in Zero Trust Segmentation, with employees distributed across Japan, Brazil, the EU, and the United States. As the company expanded internationally, sourcing hardware became a bottleneck: it had no legal presence in several key regions, procurement was slow, vendors were unresponsive, and onboarding a new hire often required a manual workaround.
GroWrk removed those roadblocks — simplifying purchasing, speeding up onboarding, and eliminating the need for a local entity in every country Illumio hires in.
Procurement that stopped at the U.S. border
Illumio is a global cybersecurity company with employees spread across Japan, Brazil, the EU, and the United States. As it expanded internationally, its IT team faced growing difficulty managing hardware procurement across borders. Without legal entities in several key regions, sourcing and shipping devices quickly became a major bottleneck.
We spoke with Gianfranco Spatola, who oversees global hardware procurement and onboarding logistics at Illumio, about the roadblocks his team hit while supporting a growing international workforce:
- Being able to buy laptops only in the U.S. added cost to every international onboarding.
- Vendors in key regions like Japan were unresponsive and hard to manage.
- Outdated product catalogs slowed down the quoting process.
- No real-time inventory visibility, so manual workflows slowed onboarding and required workarounds.
- Loaner devices had to be shipped as a stopgap, adding complexity and hurting the employee experience.
These challenges slowed new-hire onboarding and put a growing burden on Illumio's IT operations. Without a centralized system, the process stayed reactive, inconsistent, and hard to scale.
"So far, this has kind of been the best solution that we've found for international procurement."
Buying hardware where Illumio has no entity
To fix procurement and deployment in one move, Illumio partnered with GroWrk to centralize hardware logistics across its global workforce. The goal was to reduce manual IT effort and remove the dependency on local entities and country-specific vendors.
Gianfranco and his team rolled out GroWrk across key international markets — including Japan, Brazil, and the EU — supporting global hires without adding internal complexity or new vendor relationships:
- Hardware procurement in countries where Illumio has no legal presence.
- Hands-off deployment and security through ABM and Intune-based zero-touch enrollment.
- A responsive account manager who kept Illumio informed on lead times and order status.
- Geographic coverage broad enough to onboard distributed teams wherever they are.
Instead of managing procurement country by country, Illumio now runs everything through the GroWrk platform. Orders are placed centrally, and devices ship directly to new hires preconfigured and ready to use.
"GroWrk provided a solution to procure in those locations while not requiring an entity."
Sub-hour responses, zero regional delays
GroWrk let Illumio simplify international procurement, reduce onboarding delays, and stop managing local vendors — freeing up IT resources and making global operations more consistent. Since implementing GroWrk, Gianfranco and his team have:
- Procured and deployed devices in multiple countries without legal entities.
- Cut onboarding-related IT workload by eliminating manual order tracking.
- Achieved sub-1-hour response times from GroWrk reps — versus days with past vendors.
- Delivered preconfigured laptops to employees in hard-to-serve regions like Japan and Brazil.
- Eliminated the need for loaner devices and reactive workarounds.
The added speed and reliability let Illumio's IT team spend more time on strategic work — improving internal workflows and supporting security compliance — without growing headcount or the vendor list.
Looking ahead, Illumio plans to open up platform access to HR, use the Okta integration, and add device retrieval and storage as its headcount grows.
"The responsiveness — the fact that we're getting it in a very timely manner — that's a pretty critical piece to the business."
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