Webex’s Carbon Insights Feature – Javed Khan, Cisco Collaboration

This is texturung TV. Hello and welcome to techstrong TV. I'm Bonnie Schneider with the growing concern for impact the impact of carbon Emissions on our planet companies are prioritizing sustainability in their operations.

Our Guest today is Javad Khan senior vice president and general manager of Cisco collaboration. Javed has a passion for delivering amazing team collaboration experiences and brings 20 plus years of Enterprise and consumer product leadership to Cisco today. We'll discuss the carbon insights feature in WebEx and how it can help organizations meet their sustainability goals job Ed.

Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you Bonnie for having me and thank you for spending time with this topic which sometimes that doesn't quite get all the attention but we are excited about what we have to share. That's great.

Well, can you explain the carbon insights feature in WebEx and how it helps organizations meet their sustainability goals. Yeah, sure. So this is a first of a Kind feature.

That's we've launched and this came some out of some of our own learnings in terms of us evaluating our own carbon footprint. One of the things we realized was that our customers would benefit not just from using our products that reduce travel and increase collaboration and reduce the carbon emissions footprint, but giving them visibility into what was the emissions footprint of the devices that they were using so video conferencing devices, which are installed World worldwide and conference rooms based on the power. They are consuming and how long they're on the use a standard formula to calculate the carbon emissions and make that available to our customers why a central administrative feature that we have it's called control house.

So customers can look at that utilization over time and make decisions on how to optimize that going forward. What sounds interesting so how does the tool provide scope to emissions reporting and what recommendations does it offer for optimizing energy consumption usage of WebEx devices? Yeah, so these so each of our devices uses a certain amount of power when it's in use when it's in sleep mode or deep sleep mode.

So we we collect analytics from your entire devices footprint that's usually installed in conference rooms or even some some home devices based on how long the device is being used and how much power it's consuming. We calculate we use a standard formula. That's that's available to calculate those those emissions.

We make those available for the entire organization over time. So you can look at how much is being used during the weekdays. Then the might have been more people using those devices.

So it allows you to look at a trend. What we all do though is we give you insights into what if you set certain office hours or certain periods as office hours where these devices can now go into a deep sleep mode there by reducing the emissions during that time so customers can now visualize that over time and then track a time and make Intelligent Decisions about how many devices and where those devices have been used. So how does this new capability fit into Cisco's larger sustainability commitment?

Including the goal of reaching Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions by Yeah, so that's one of the goals that Cisco's set and you know, we have a lot of work to do but as we looked at at how we can get there one of the most important aspects of that is getting a view into what your current footprint is and we've been actively working on quite a few things. So one of the additional goals we set ourselves and it comes to our own devices because we make a lot of hard there is making sure we all of our new products going forward 100% funny products by 2025 will incorporate circular design principles in their design. So making sure that we are minimizing waste making sure that the the components they're using are recyclable and we made some good progress on that.

So I recently launched Cisco robot, which is one of our leading video conferencing devices, which you'll find in many conference rooms, you use this 100% hundred percent recycled recyclable packaging material that not only reduces that footprint but also reduces things like the transportation costs and that in turn has a cumulative effect and you're going to do the same with the rest of our device portfolio including our phones by 2025 something Cisco is driving across the company and we feel that we've made some really good progress there. That's interesting. I didn't realize there were so many different initiatives happening at the same time in order to reach those goals, you know here at Tech strung TV many of our viewers work in Tech and they may be the it administrator for the company they work for so, I'm wondering how you if you can describe how if they're using carbon insights.

How would that help them? Make more sustainable decisions for their organizations. So this feature will launch this summer.

So it's not available yet, but once available what and typical administrator should be able to do is get get informed about their footprint. I think oftentimes you don't realize that you might have a device sitting in a particular conference room or a conference room that is not being used during certain hours. So they will be able to look at the current utilization and it will also tell you when the device is being used by how many people so the combination that data will now allow them to make educated decisions about you know, whether they have too many devices or two devices and can they consolidate some of those devices set some parameters that these devices actually go into deep sleep.

So those are some of the decisions they will be able to make and you know data is everything once you start to see how much how much emissions that these devices are generating. You can now start to make educated decisions about it. You can also give you a view into how some of the older devices compared with newer devices because as technology modernizes the newer devices can actually save you not just the emissions from these devices but also the power consumption and so we will start to give you visibility to those kinds of things in the coming months and that'll help you save money in addition to being more green.

Well, you know, it's funny because all these collaboration tools now are in the Forefront after coming out of the pandemic so many people relying on them, but I'm wondering with all this competition that there is how does WebEx compare to other collaboration Tools in terms of sustainability? Yeah, so the the one of the benefits of the advancements and collaborative usage of collaboration tools the last couple of years, you know on the side effects of covid was we are all using it a lot more than we've ever used and that in itself by the way was a big big driver of reducing emissions frankly because we are traveling less we are able to have conversations like these because of the advancements in technology. So the collaboration business across the industry actually has been a big driver and in in helping that sustainability, but we continue to alongside, you know, many many other vendors continue to focus on making sure that these devices themselves consume less power.

They're more recyclable. We have programs where for older devices that might not be as sustainable. We have programs that we will recycle those for our customers.

So lots of the progress happening not just that collaborate and not just at Cisco but across the collaboration this industry How do you see sustainability playing a role in the future of collaboration technology going forward five 10 years from now. Yes a sustainability and I'd say is no longer a buzzword. I was actually in in Europe last month and it is a business imperative.

Your our customers are making decisions on what products they buy based on these sustainability posture of not just the particular device but companies as a whole so it has become a business imperative. It's good for business. We were able to have conversations with a lot of customers primarily because we we were aware of not just what the company was doing and from and carbon emissions standpoint, but also because we were able to help our customers make better decisions about their footprint.

So I think with collaboration we are uniquely positioned not just to reduce the impact we have but help our customers use the impact they have and that is top of mind for for many many customers and it's good business and we are starting to see that especially with our collaboration products. You know, we talked a little bit about what Cisco's doing in the sustainability space, but I'm wondering about other plans for Cisco collaboration to explain expand sustainability and their efforts beyond what we're talking about now the carbon insights. Yes, so that is there's a lot of stuff happening.

I'll pick a few things that that's that are related one is we've got a lot of our Cloud products running in data centers, which which themselves have a large footprint the the power that we use in our data centers in Europe. We announce this last month is hundred percent renewable energy. And that's a you know, that's that's there's a lot of data centers globally across the world and we're gonna extend that across our data center footprint over time and I mentioned the recycling program.

So then our customers have devices on have there that they want to swap out with more sustainable green or Hardware. We have a recycling program that customers can return that to us and we take care of it for them and and Energy Efficiency is a big Focus both across our networking security and and our collaboration portfolio reducing the power consumption not just to these devices but Technologies like power over internet. Allow you to Now can do a lot of things like lighting and and room control and so on using much lesser power is a big technology focus and it's ninety of building into our products.

So lots of good stuff happening. And as I said earlier, it is actually it releases your cost. It's good business and good for your customers, too.

And you said earlier that you do see an increase in the demand from your customers? Have you seen that just since covid or have you seen it maybe over the past few years of people wanting to be more sustainable? Yes.

Yes so during covid it was somewhat driven by necessity people didn't want to who weren't able to travel as much but I think as they came out of that and noticed the benefit that these tools were able to provide not just in terms of staying productive, but in terms of reducing their their footprint and their costs all translates the costs, I think it was a very quick learning the last couple of years that that there is not just a benefit from and sustainably standpoint, but there is a bottom line benefit and I think you're just seeing that accelerate. That's why you're you're starting to see companies take a good look at what their footprint looks like and how sustainable it is because they notice that the online I think the technology continues to get better and with companies focusing more on it. I think we'll continue to see that accelerate both customers and shareholders are demanding better visibility into your your into your sustainability effort.

So I think we believe that's going to continue to accelerate. I agree Javad Khan. It was really interesting to speak with you the senior vice president and general manager of Cisco collaboration.

Thank you so much for joining us on techstrung TV. Thank you buddy for having me. Sure.

Well stay with us. We have a lot more coming up after this.