Glean Stays Ahead in the AI Race with a Secure, Automated Network

Modern IT teams don’t get congratulated for maintaining systems. In fact, they’re measured by how invisible they become.

Not so long ago, Glean’s network was far from invisible. It was noisy and noticeable — requiring constant babysitting that pulled the team away from higher-value work. When your company is moving fast, that’s not sustainable.

A Network Held Together by Duct Tape

Charlie Verrey, Glean’s IT Manager, and team were running a highly reactive, heavily patched environment. They spent hours reproducing issues, troubleshooting specific locations, sending workaround communications, and managing escalations — instead of focusing on strategic priorities.

Poor Wi-Fi interrupted meetings and generated a steady stream of support tickets. The team needed the network to behave more like a service layer than a collection of boxes that required constant monitoring.

Security Can’t Be An Afterthought

As one of the fastest-scaling players in enterprise AI, Glean helps companies operationalize AI-powered search and knowledge management across the workplace. As an AI-forward company, it can’t afford to treat network security separately from innovation. It needs infrastructure that is secure by design, governed by identity-based policies, and reliable enough that employees can move fast without unnecessary friction.

The more successful the company, the more of a target it becomes. Layering security on top of a fragile foundation opens the door to vulnerabilities — and for a company like Glean, weak or fragmented network security isn’t just an IT problem. It’s a business risk.

From Infrastructure Burden to Managed Service

That all changed when Glean moved to the Nile Secure NaaS platform — designed to deliver reliable connectivity backed by autonomous operations, built-in Zero Trust, and a service model that removes the operational burden of traditional infrastructure.

The change was night and day.

“Nile transformed how we think about the network. Instead of being just a layer that traffic passes through, it became part of how we enforce security, apply policy, and maintain consistency across the business. With high-performance wired and wireless connectivity and Zero Trust built directly into the network, enforcement, visibility, and policy consistency become native capabilities rather than layered add-ons — creating a fundamentally more reliable network with strong security posture.”

Charlie Verrey
IT Manager, Glean

More Time to Move the Business Forward

Nile gave Glean greater operational visibility, faster problem resolution, and a noticeably better user experience. In one office with recurring Wi-Fi issues, 5 GHz channel utilization dropped from roughly 75% to 50%, while downlink speeds improved from 28 Mbps to around 100 Mbps. Employees stopped raising Wi-Fi issues on the company Slack channel altogether.

With a service-oriented model, the team spends far less time worrying about whether every issue will turn into an expensive troubleshooting or hardware replacement event. There are no surprise upgrades or hidden trade-offs. Nile’s automation simplifies day-to-day operations, allowing Glean to focus less on network maintenance and more on optimizing its environment and validating the employee experience.

“We saw tickets drop by over 90%, as Nile stated. When the network stops being a daily source of pain, the entire team can operate more strategically,”

Charlie Verrey
IT Manager, Glean

With time freed from firefighting, Glean’s IT team is now exploring use cases that move the business forward — including attendance tracking, automation work with Glean agents, ISP planning for new offices, SIEM integration, and conference room standards.

“Maybe the single biggest benefit is the time that Nile has given back to the IT team. With more time available to improve the environment, as opposed to holding it together, the network has stopped being a daily source of pain. The entire team can now operate more strategically”

Charlie Verrey
IT Manager, Glean

A Partner Aligned with the Mission

Glean selected Nile because it needed a partner who would work through tuning, policy, and operational issues — not leave all the complexity with Glean’s internal team. When issues arise, Nile autonomously tunes the system, escalates to engineering when needed, and proactively replaces hardware to ensure the environment keeps improving over time.

There’s also a strong alignment in philosophy: both companies believe systems should get smarter, simpler to operate, and more scalable over time. Manual layers get reduced to a minimum; built-in AI and autonomous operations do the heavy lifting.

A Network That Accelerates AI, Not Slows It Down

High-growth companies can’t afford to have valuable IT resources tied up maintaining unstable legacy infrastructure and software. Nile has empowered Glean to move away from reactive network management toward a cleaner, more supportable environment — one where IT can focus on the employee experience and strategic work.

“A good network partnership provides more than hardware and coverage maps. It enables the team to move faster and operate with more confidence.”

Charlie Verrey
IT Manager, Glean

With Nile, Glean has eliminated the legacy network tax that was slowing its AI deployments, IoT adoption, and path to Zero Trust compliance — and replaced it with a foundation built to keep pace with today’s innovation, and scale to meet whatever comes next.