Cisco Track Goes Green with Environmentally Friendly Technologies

With increased consideration of ecologically sound business practices, which no doubt are exacerbated by the rising price of fuel, “going green” is top of mind for individuals and companies worldwide — and telecom is no exception.

Today, Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) will lead a full education track on green initiatives, discussing environmental considerations in conjunction with collaboration solutions, data centers and managed services. Cisco has expressed a firm commitment to reducing its own carbon footprint, and the company engages partners and employees in efforts to manage its impact on the environment, developing and nurturing endeavors that address climate change.

Beginning at 9 a.m. today, Cisco’s first session, “Going Green with Advanced Collaboration Solutions,” will address various ways to use collaborative technology solutions to help businesses, their customers’ business and the environment. Session leader Bill McCarthy, director, service provider East operation for Cisco, said he’s proud of the stance Cisco has taken in being sensitive to environmental issues. “Cisco is committed to a high level of environmental responsibility in its business operations, culture, products and customer solutions,” explained McCarthy. “We believe that managing our own environment footprint is important and necessary — and we’re doing that — but to really have impact, we are thinking beyond our borders.”

McCarthy said Cisco’s plan was to reduce overall global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 25 percent by 2012 via conservation, efficiency, renewable energy and leveraging technologies like telepresence and unified communications. In fact, Cisco just released to production its 250th telepresence room. There’s no doubt the green movement will play a large part in advancing the collaboration market.

McCarthy said the morning session will allow service provider peers to “share real-world examples with the audience of how collaboration solutions have been implemented in their organizations with positive results for the environment and their businesses.”

The track’s second session will address ways to “green up” the data center to efficiently enable advanced services for the connected business. Robert Boetticher, director, service provider systems engineers at Cisco, will lead the session.

Boetticher said Cisco is innovating through virtualization technologies and collaborating with different parties to drive impact in the data center. “Cisco virtualization solutions can increase storage asset utilization up to 70 percent,” he explained. “Within Cisco, virtualization technologies have helped us more than double our storage utilization, reducing demand for power, air conditioning, floor space, rack space, cabling, hardware, software and backup resources in Cisco data centers.”

During the session, three of Cisco’s key service provider customers with data center business models will present real-world green solutions. The panelists joining Boetticher to represent these service providers are Lenny Chesal, chief marketing officer, Host.net; Chetan Dube, president and CEO, IPsoft; and Marvin Wheeler, COO, U.S. commercial, Terremark.

The final session in Cisco’s green track will address green initiatives in the managed services realm. Encouraging businesses to do more with less and outsource whatever they can, Cisco believes managed services could be a big money-maker for many service providers in the midst of the eco-friendly revolution.

Session leader Spencer Hodson, director, service provider sales business development for Cisco, said the session will showcase real-world managed services solutions that have had a positive impact on the environment and on the businesses of some of Cisco's key service provider customers.

“No one company or innovation will have enough impact to reverse global climate change — collaboration is key,” said Hodson. “When a service provider offers managed services that improve end-user collaboration, it can often quickly transform those end-users' operations in ways that may have been challenging for the end user to implement themselves. Through managed services, end-user corporations can reduce the impact of their operations on the environment, and increase efficiency through improved collaboration.”

Hodson said that Cisco believes anything connected to the Internet can be “more green.”

“The network can be the backbone for environmental innovations,” he continued. “The network is the key technology enabler to manage, monitor and better utilize energy and to help achieve sustainable methodologies for greenhouse gas emissions reductions globally.”

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