How Cisco Tech is Revolutionising Corporate Climate Action

Technology and AI undoubtedly play a vital role powering climate analytics and, as a result, propel climate technology and the sustainability action that comes with it.

One such advocate for technology and sustainability’s close-knit relationship – as well as enabling others’ sustainability journeys and meaningful climate action – is networking giant Cisco.

The company boasts a comprehensive environmental sustainability strategy and vision, and recently shared how it facilitates saving energy and reduces carbon emissions through its sustainability dashboards.

Leading the briefing were three of Cisco’s sustainability leaders:

• Mary de Wysocki, Chief Sustainability Officer
• Denise Lee, VP of Engineering Sustainability
• Dr Colin Seward, Chief Sustainability Office Technology and Data Lead

The trio ran through a number of key sustainability talking points, such as the importance of data and insight into Cisco’s vision and roadmap for energy management alongside a deep dive into Cisco’s Sustainability Data Foundation, accompanied by use cases and demos.

Cisco showcasing the power of data in climate action

“We’re facing a tonne of really critical questions on not only what we say but on how we communicate our ESG strategy – our initiatives, our progress – as well as the challenges that come from this,” Mary begins. “You really see this showing up in annual sustainability reports, something that has become the norm across the industry.

“At Cisco, we’ve been reporting out on our corporate social responsibility and our progress since 2005. We’ve listened to feedback from our customers, analysts, shareholders, advocacy groups, and we really are aligning our reporting against a number of ESG reporting frameworks as well as disclosure standards.”

This lays the groundwork of how Cisco has incorporated data metrics in a landscape that is shaped by growing regulatory pressures and increasing demand for greater transparency.

Mary adds that as companies are increasingly recognising the critical role of data in driving sustainability efforts, numbers have to turn into meaningful action. 

“When you have a very dynamic regulatory environment, you’ve got to really think about sustainability data,” she says. “It's becoming really important not only in terms of how we develop our own strategy but to a whole host of stakeholders all the way from our customers to our investors, from governmental entities to partners.”

Cisco uses its sustainability data to empower its engineers to make the right design decisions for not only sustainability, but circularity. This ensures that Cisco supports sustainability activities and commitments. 

Mary is Cisco’s first CSO and says that, on the Cisco Chief Sustainability Office’s creation, a core focus was – and remains on – uniting leaders across the company. This builds out Cisco’s Sustainability Data Foundation, which Mary describes as a bespoke end-to-end platform that provides a single source of truth for all sustainability product data.

“It allows us to connect a variety of complex data sets using cutting edge predictive modelling that will allow us to understand and navigate our own sustainability journey, but work with our customers, our partners and suppliers to do the same thing,” Mary underscores. “It’s already integrating 25 different applications and tools and it’s designed on an architecture that ensures that this information can be validated.”

Behind Cisco’s Sustainability Data Foundation (SDF)

As explained by Colin, Cisco’s SDF was established as one of the first priorities of the company’s Chief Sustainability Office.

The process began by engaging with different stakeholder groups within Cisco to understand their use cases, existing data, desired data, as well as their future plans. They identified four major categories of use cases.

• Strategy and performance tracking
• Products and solutions
• Go-to-market activities
• Reporting

Now, the SDF integrates various types of data – including existing enterprise data, new sustainability-specific data and third-party data – showcasing both the complexity and breadth of data types involved, along with the importance of treating this data properly.

“There’s a lot of different data types out there,” Colin explains. “Some of these on the face of it sound very familiar, like supply chain data, customer data and procurement data. But in reality, as you start to dive into each of these different categories, there’s a combination of data that exists already and is well managed in existing enterprise data warehouses and applications. There’s also a lot of new data or new angles on data.”

Although not all data is currently available in SDF, it continues to evolve as it becomes “broader and deeper and used by more tools”, as Colin shares.

SDF as a climate tech solution

There’s no doubt that SDF stands at the forefront of climate technology and is a cutting-edge example of how data-driven sustainability decisions can enable climate action at a corporate level. 

The SDF’s impact is particularly evident in product carbon footprint calculations. Colin says: “The number of requests we’ve had from customers and partners around product carbon footprint has been going through the roof. The number has doubled over the last 12 months.” 

This surge in demand not only reflects the growing importance of climate tech solutions in business decision-making and customer relationships, but it also underscores a broader shift towards accountability and transparency in corporate sustainability practices.

Colin continues: “It's gone from customers asking to have the product carbon footprints (PCFs) for the last order of 50 or so products to customers writing in with their complete inventory of Cisco products asking for the PCFs of everything they’ve purchased with Cisco.

“We’re also getting some partners who are asking for PCFs for thousands of products – basically everything they resell on Cisco’s behalf.” 

Customers are using this data in a variety of ways, Colin shares. Some, naturally, are looking into their own greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting, with inventory assessment, large-scale evaluations, partner use and decision making also coming into play.

And, given the growing regulatory pressure around sustainability reporting highlighted by Mary, it’s also likely that customers are using PCF data to support their own ESG reporting and regulatory compliance efforts.

Denise leads the development of dashboards that merge SDF data with real-time product data and telemetry. This integration allows for immediate insights and advice to customers on optimising their operations sustainably, showcasing how climate tech can drive real-time sustainability improvements.

She emphasises the importance of credible and verifiable data sourced directly from Cisco devices, which is crucial for scaling sustainability efforts. 

“You can’t fix what you can’t see,” she declares, highlighting that visibility into energy management is foundational for effective analysis and insight generation.

“That visibility then allows you to do the analysis and gather those insights. We are working on transgressing this maturity between visibility analysts and insights and then eventually to automation and control. 

“That automation control can do everything from troubleshooting as well as meet our compliance and reporting goals. Even the most sophisticated customers who have very rigorous goals are out there with a lot of ambitious targets are doing this either ad hoc or hiring many, many dozens of add-on tools and consultancies to help them understand this. But ultimately you need the data and that data can only come from either Cisco or the customer.”

Denise also identifies a growing interest among executives in sustainability metrics, highlighting that the number of CXOs coming into the executive briefings have “very dramatically gone up”.

This shift indicates that sustainability is becoming a priority at the highest levels of organisations. These metrics, Denise shares, are also essential for helping customers evaluate their energy consumption and make informed decisions about equipment refreshes. By providing these insights through user-friendly dashboards, Cisco empowers customers to align their operations with sustainability goals.

The importance of data-driven solutions in the advance of climate goals

By merging SDF data with real-time telemetry and focusing on actionable insights, Cisco not only enhances its own sustainability initiatives but also supports its customers in achieving their environmental objectives.

Colin says that data-driven solutions advance climate goals for Cisco as well as its customers, specifically in identifying and prioritising greenhouse gas emission reduction across global operations and supply chains.

Cisco’s focus, Colin emphasises, is primarily on energy management, which translates to GHG emissions. He highlights the importance of real-time operational data for customers to optimise their energy use and make informed purchasing decisions. 

“It’s something of extreme interest to customers to look at the operations, what's happening in real time and get that telemetry and the feedback and work out what they can do, what ports can they switch off, which equipment can they can turn off outside of ours and how they optimise it,” Colin says.

Denise adds: “I don’t think anyone has some silver bullet and we don’t have all of the answers by any means, but I think we're going to start to see a lot of consolidation. 

“There is an opportunity – in early stages – so we’re seeing a lot of players come into the mix, a lot of layering and people getting a piece of the pie.

“Ultimately, data is king and queen — and the access to data and the governance around that data is going to be very material.

“It gives me a lot of ease and rest easy knowing that we have this governance process in place and that we're building this data foundation to scale across our entire portfolio. We’re really just getting started.”

To read the full article in the magazine, click HERE.

Explore the latest edition of Sustainability Magazine and be part of the conversation at our global conference series, Sustainability LIVE. 

Discover all our upcoming events and secure your tickets today.

Sustainability Magazine is a BizClik brand