"We are committed to moving from alineareconomy, where products are used and then thrown away, to acirculareconomy that makes better use of our limited natural resources." Cisco

We've seen amazing stories from our Cisco IoT (Internet of Things) customers of how they are leveraging IoT technologies to create amore sustainable future -from sensors that extend product life through IoT-enabled utility grids for renewable resource management and more.

Equally important is our own commitment to move beyond thetake-make-wastemodel.With thousands of customers across critical industries like utilities, manufacturing, and transportation deploying tens of thousands of devices, we've amassed a huge IoT footprint.And the reality with Industrial IoT is that thesedeviceswill have alonglifespan of 10-15+ years. 

Today I've invited participants from across Cisco to explore how we are making more sustainable choices and the impact to our customers.

Vikas:Let's start with a look at how our IoT products are helping one industry in particular move the needle towards a more sustainable future.

AGOSTINO:We're seeing remarkable progress in the utility sector with their use of our IoT technologies. As the world leverages more renewable energy sources like solar and wind, theutility industry faces new challenges. Those renewable energy sources aren't as predictable as other sources of power -requiring them to proactively manage their grids to deliver the reliability we all expect. In some countries, like Italy, utilities face steep fines for every second that the grid is down.

By using our Cisco IoT products to digitize their grid, they can increase efficiencies across their entire network, leverage more renewable energy sources, and deliver those high levels of reliability. And once you digitize the grid, you can start gaining additional benefits, like using smart meters as sensors as part of conservation voltage reduction (CVR) schemes. These meters are essential in helping the utilities company get real-time energy consumptiondata to balance the grid. But, utility companies can also build services on top of that data to help customers understand more about their energy usage, like when to curtail energy usage to lower their utility bills or when it's the ideal time to sell their green solar power back to the grid.

I think that 2021 is going to be a remarkable year for IoT and sustainability. Just this past summer here in Europe, we saw the world's largest green stimulus package, withanearmark of US$572B for climate action. IoT is at the heart of the new green, sustainable energy economy. I can't wait to see what Cisco and our customers can build together.

Vikas: Can you give us some insight into the products our customers are using -like the utility providers Agostino mentioned? How are we building circular design thinking into IoT products digitization? 

SRIPRIYA: Futureproofing the design of our new IoT routers was one of the most important considerations -particularly given that long lifespan our customers need.It's important to address our customers' current business challenges, while also giving them easy ways to leverage new innovations without having to completely replace their installed products. 

An excellent example is 5G (and whatever comes next! ) We know that our IoT customers need multiple connectivity solutions depending on their use cases. For example, we intentionally designed our new Cisco 1100 Series Industrial Integrated Services Router (Cisco IR1101) in a modular fashion. Customers can swap in LTE or 5G modules when the pricing and use case make the most sense for them, without having to replace the device. In fact, our new Cisco IR1101 offers an impressive 140 unique combinations. 

With forward-thinking circular design, we enable our customers to easily and cost-effectively take advantage of innovation. They save the expense of buying completely new equipment every time their requirements change, which also eliminates the resources and energy required to create new equipment across manufacturing, shipping, and logistics. By upgrading or repairing just the individual modules, customers extend the product's lifetime, reduce materials that are disposed of prematurely, and help conserve resources, like metals and paint.  

Vikas: Sripriya -You've also been working with our teams across Cisco to lower the environmental impact of our products through their design. You had some impactful results.

SRIPRIYA: Let me highlight two primary areas:

• POWER CONSUMPTION: When we design our products, we put a lot of thought and planning into power consumption.As IoT devices are broadly deployed with long lifecycles, the energyusage really adds up quickly. I'm proud to say that our newCisco IR1101 has reduced the idleenergy consumption by 45%from the previousgenerationand 35% when running on full load. Considering the product salesand deploymentovera 5-yearperiod, thattranslates into10,800 MWh of energy savings or5,280 metric tonsof CO2 emissionsreduction.
• ENVIRONMENTAL RUGGEDNESS: Our thinking here is Design Once, Use Anywhere. These devices have low energy usage, don't need cooling or heating, can work from -40