By Sherry Koh | May 14, 2010

Experience the conference via live webcast

Cisco Malaysia managing director Anne Abraham

Cisco Malaysia managing director Anne Abraham talks about live webcast for the REHDA Green Solutions Conference 2010. Abraham brings about 20 years of experience in the Malaysian ICT industry. At Cisco, Anne has a keen interest in driving the adoption of green technology in Malaysian businesses by creating awareness among business leaders and the Government.

Please explain Cisco Malaysia’s role in REHDA’s Green Solutions Conference 2010.
Cisco is hosting a series of live speaking-sessions with the use of Cisco Live WebCast solutions at REHDA’s Green Solutions Conference 2010. With Cisco’s Live WebCast solution, participants need not travel to a central location be present at the conference. The Cisco Live WebCast solution helps REHDA connect with 30 event centres within Malaysia and in the region, enabling access to discussions among the panelists on green technology as a sustainable differentiator in the property industry.

The Cisco Live WebCast solution is powered by Cisco WebEx technology, a web application where all communication and sharing of voice, video and data is done over the network. With Cisco Live WebCast solution, conference participants can just login to their preferred speaker slots, access presentation materials and resources, and interact with the presenters remotely. The participants can continue to connect, communicate and collaborate effectively in a virtual auditorium even if they are not physically present.

To experience REHDA’s conference webcast, participants will need to first register with REHDA at www.rehdainstitute.com for specific login details. A link will then be sent to them and all they will need to do is connect online, logon to Cisco Live WebCast and start their conference sessions.

The event is tagged as Malaysia’s first live webcast conference. Why hasn’t it be done here before?
The concept of live webcast is not new. In fact, larger enterprises and global multinational companies in Malaysia have long adopted and reaped benefits from conducting trainings, meetings and conferences via live webcasts. Many businesses in Malaysia are aware that webcast can help increase productivity, maximise efficiency, reduce cycle time, extend business reach and improve communication.

Realising these values, REHDA and Cisco are jointly applying the live webcast technology on a nationwide event to take web conferencing experience to a new level that has never been reached in Malaysia. In the past, the idea of a concurrent webcast event had always been hampered by the perception that existing infrastructure may not be able to support that scale of implementation for optimum results. For many organisations, they simply did not know how or where to begin.

Today, the technology, infrastructure and skills are available, and indeed optimised to enable the delivery of large-scale live webcast. REHDA’s appreciation and adoption of Cisco Live Webcast for the event is a progressive start to emphasise the possibly of enabling a nationwide conference online. We hope that this exercise will encourage a wider adoption of the similar conferencing model, especially as more people connect to a high speed broadband.

Has Cisco Malaysia participated or orchestrated any live webcasts to other countries?
At Cisco, our Chairman and CEO John Chambers said, “A key competitive advantage for Cisco is how we use our own technology to drive productivity”. We understand the role that technology plays in helping us reduce our effect on the environment. Therefore, we have developed technologies that enable collaboration and innovation to take place without the need for travel not only for our customers, but also within Cisco.

Most recently, Cisco hosted a panel on IT and climate change organised by Greenpeace in conjunction with Earth Day in April with various technology giants. The panel discussion was powered by Cisco WebEx technologies, with people logging on from all over the world.

Internally, we have also hosted numerous announcements with Cisco WebEx and Cisco TelePresence, for example, our 2nd Quarter Fiscal 2010 Technology and Customer Highlights that took place with the participation from offices around the world.

In Malaysia, some of the more notable announcements made over Cisco WebEx and Cisco TelePresence include the Asia Pacific Quarterly Highlights Report for Q2FY10, a business update on key Cisco growth areas in providing technologies to help enterprises reap the benefits of next-generation Internet, new customer collaborations and the release of new technologies. These announcements were conducted with spokespersons from other markets spanning Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong, India and the United States.

In the IT industry (products and solutions), which is the biggest contributor towards carbon emission?
According to Gartner, the information and communications technology (ICT) industry contributes to 2 percent of total global CO2 emissions. The good news is, there are available technologies that can easily address inefficiencies and user behaviour to significantly reduce the 98 percent of CO2 emission caused by other activities and industries – that is via broadband enabled technologies that support video and voice over Internet Protocol (IP).

One of the areas under close scrutiny by major business decision makers is business travel. In a global survey conducted by the Harvard Business Review, it was noted that more than half of the respondents (52%) said restrictions on the number of flights they take for business purposes would hurt their businesses in light of today’s global economic downturn. Meanwhile, more than two thirds (69%) reported a reduction in their travel budgets over the last six months while more than half (57%) have instituted business travel restrictions. These will be worrying figures if an alternative means to business travel does not exist.

We also note data centres to be another main contributor towards increased carbon emissions. Today, the demand for data centre solutions is on the rise following the exponential growth in rich content, video and web applications. With the cost of power rising dramatically, this is more critical for the data centre of corporations, which can consume 25% of the total energy in a typical IT-intensive organisation. Businesses are even more focused on managing and conserving energy, and minimising cost and environmental impact of their IT organisation.

How green is Cisco as a company, in terms of its products and solutions, CSR efforts, building, etc?
In early May, Greenpeace announced Cisco as one of the most innovative companies who received Greenpeace’s top marks in its ranking of computing vendors’ activity on climate change. In its annual Cool IT Leaderboard report, Greenpeace had placed Cisco at the top of the list ahead of companies like Google, Ericsson and IBM because of its move into building energy management and the smart grid, technologies that can boost renewable energy use and efficiency. It recognises Cisco’s attitude and initiative towards green, and puts us in a position to help other businesses do so.

At Cisco, we have a goal to reduce our green house gas (GHG) emission by 25 percent by 2010 across the organisation. By deploying innovative information technology solutions and using the network as a platform for 21st-century environmental management, we believe we can significantly alter our greenhouse gas footprint and help our customers meet their sustainability goals.

We have an EcoBoard, a cross-functional group of leaders that ensures we have a long-term vision, strategy, and governance structure so that we are aligned in the same green direction. We have also created an Environmental Data Tool, an IP-based tool for monitoring, managing and tracking GHGs, which we have made available to the public free of charge on our website.

We also hold more than 4,000 virtual meetings a week, globally, using collaborative technologies such as Cisco WebEx and Cisco TelePresence. This has resulted in a reduction in our travel budget from USD300 million to USD750 million a year, globally. We are seeing our customers from all industries, similarly exploring new ways to conduct long-distance meetings in order to save costs, increase productivity, shorten time-to-market and reduce carbon footprint.

In 2008, we also developed a strategy and led cross-divisional programmes to reduce the environmental impact associated with Cisco products throughout their lifecycle. These included supply chain practices that:

• Increase natural resource conservation and efficiency while reducing raw material, fabrication, packaging and transport costs;

• Reduce waste while improving product design, packaging, and delivery costs; and

• Decrease or eliminate the use of potentially hazardous substances.

Digitally (IT-wise), what can companies and the general public do to reduce carbon footprint?
It is especially important to understand that the benefits from green efforts extend well beyond cost cutting. At Cisco, we believe that what is good for the environment can also be good for business, thanks to modern technical innovation. Therefore, beyond just doing the right thing, corporate Malaysia need to realign business processes in terms of how they collaborate across organisations to build out new business models that help reduce carbon footprint

Companies and the general public first need to change their current mindset in approaching environmental sustainability. Gone are the days when recycling is a mark of being environmentally conscious.

Top business decision makers need to make a leadership call to be eco-aware through sustainable businesses practices. Likewise, when there is leadership, the general public will follow suit. With the public today are asking more questions about the products they are purchasing from manufacturing to packaging, shipping to end-of-life recycling, failing to develop a holistic green supply chain could seriously cause environmental initiatives to fail.

Needless to say, we have gone past just thinking about green in a ‘feel good’ way. We need to start walking-the-talk. It is about focusing on aligning all business systems with the company’s vision of sustainability. It needs to become part of our DNA, not just to achieve our green goals but that of our customers as well.

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