case study Simplifying the Stack: How The Motley Fool Streamlined Its Communications with Zoom The Motley Fool Founded: 1993 What started as an investment newsletter written by Headquarters: Alexandria, brothers David and Tom Gardner in 1993 has grown into Virginia an internationally-recognized financial services company Industry: Financial services with a fanatical group of followers known as “Fools.” Challenges: Disparate Headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, The Motley Fool technology stack, complex has offices in Denver, Colorado, and Sydney, Australia, and on-premises infrastructure also serves customers in the UK, Canada, Hong Kong, and management, geo-dispersed Germany with regional news and market analysis. Driven workforce by the purpose to make the world smarter, happier, and Solution: Zoom Meetings, richer, The Motley Fool has built its success on providing Zoom Rooms, Zoom Phone its customers with insightful analysis and clever takes on Business Benefits: investing and the stock market. This requires a robust Consolidated technology communications infrastructure that allows for constant stack, less on-premises management of collaboration and communication among offices and infrastructure, more employees around the world. connected remote workforce, Challenge improved global collaboration The Motley Fool has almost 400 employees working “People love the fact across its offices in the United States and abroad, and that we can share its success relies on these employees working together our screens without closely to provide relevant and accurate stock analysis to any cables. And it’s various markets. Although The Motley Fool had a legacy consistent between communications solution in place, it had become too difficult to manage, and the teams at The Motley Fool every room. Our were using a collection of disparate tools to communicate. employees walk in, they “Previously we were using Cisco, which worked, and see the control panel on for the most part we liked it,” said Lawrence Morrisson, the desk, and they know Head of IT at The Motley Fool. “However, it was pretty what to expect. It’s just expensive and difficult to manage. We also had other been hugely successful employees using solutions like Skype and GoToMeeting, for us.” which led to people using different hardware and devices. – Lawrence Morrisson There was no consistency, which was a real headache.” Head of IT, The Motley Fool