Cisco Systems Inc. released its FY 23 Purpose Report this week at its Cisco Live APJC in Melbourne conference in Melbourne, Australia, and I had the opportunity to talk to a group of Cisco executives about its contents.

In this article, I’ll focus on the report’s context, how the company will set the stage for the next generation of workers, and how the company is handling sustainability today and in the future.

In the report, Chief Executive Chuck Robbins writes: “Through a powerful combination of our technology, our people, and our purpose — to power an inclusive future for all — we have helped customers and communities all around the globe, and this year, we’re celebrating an amazing milestone.” The company says it has reached a goal it set in 2016 — to have an impact on 1 billion people by fiscal 2025 — a year ahead of schedule.

This isn’t the typical report that one might find from a publicly traded company, but I do think it’s important for Cisco. In 2020, amid COVID and a litany of social issues, Cisco evolved its purpose from being the company that “Empowers the Internet Generation” to “power an inclusive future for all.” The Purpose Report holds Cisco accountable to itself and its stakeholders, demonstrating that the purpose statement is more than just words.

An important point to note about this milestone is that Cisco has diligently calculated this number to ensure accuracy. When Cisco first set this goal, I asked Cisco management how they would track the path to 1 billion people, and they were crystal clear: The people would have to be directly affected by Cisco and its activities. For example, if it was to fund a company that positively affected a billion people, Cisco would not count that in its calculations.

“When we talk about purpose, and when we talk about taking care of our customers — but also larger communities — we’re acknowledging that businesses can do good and do well,” Guy Diedrich, Cisco’s senior vice president and global innovation officer, said in the briefing. “The two are not mutually exclusive.” To back up that claim, Diedrich said that, in fiscal year 2023, Cisco made $461 million in cash and in-kind contributions — directly or through the Cisco Foundation — including $387 million via the Cisco Networking Academy.

“NetAcad now is operating in its 26th year,” he said. “We operate in 190 countries and have trained over 20.5 million students. We’ve just made a very recent announcement, agreeing to train another 25 million over the next 10 years.”

For those unfamiliar with NetAcad, it’s been an incredibly important component of Cisco’s ability to change the world positively. I’ve talked to many NetAcad grads, many in poor countries with little work available. NetAcad gave them the skills to find jobs within their country or with foreign countries. This is particularly important for many women where their home country would not consider them, but a global foreign organization would.

The company is also working with 100 historically black colleges and universities in the U.S. to introduce STEM and learn skills that can help students land their first jobs. There was an interesting discussion about security and AI in the briefing. Ambika Kapur, senior vice president of security marketing, and DJ Sampath, vice president of AI products, shared how Cisco will use a mindful and systematic approach to security and the use of AI.

The technology is interesting for me — it’s what I think about every day. And the training of the next generation of workers is critical and will doubtless make a difference. But I’m interested in what Cisco and its peers are doing to improve the world, including sustainability.

How can the company ensure the world is around for the next generation and succeeding generations? Kirk Smith, senior director of customer experience product management, shared sustainable services the company is launching. “Cisco is committed to a sustainable future,” he said. “And we want to make sure that we’re also able to help our partners and customers reach their sustainability goals as well.”

In line with that thinking, the company launched a range of sustainability services for real-time energy measurement, expert consulting, and insights for improved sustainability, including Campus — via Meraki and Catalyst — in August and a sustainability priority assessment advisory service in November. It also announced the limited availability of an energy optimization assessment advisory service in November.

In January, Cisco will release Lifecycle Services Energy Optimization Management for Data Centers. Smith shared a success story about Egypt Telecom. “They were being pushed through regulation and new stakeholder expectations to define their sustainability path,” he said. “We engaged with them with the priority assessment, and in a short six weeks, they went from not knowing how they were going to progress against those goals to having a plan that they could articulate to stakeholders and implementing against that plan and being able to measure progress.”

Sustainability will ensure our future, and Cisco is making great strides to be a more sustainable company and help its customers reach their goals. Cisco is also focused on many other areas, also covered in the report, including human and worker rights, sourcing minerals responsibly, health and safety, responsible AI, inclusiveness and many more.

The report is long. And it covers more than I can write about in this space. You can read the full report here. A good way to summarize the report comes from the note from Robbins in the report introduction: “Cisco has made a difference for more than one-eighth of the world’s population — a testament to what we can achieve when people and purpose intersect in service of communities.”

I applaud Cisco for its efforts. It proves that a company can have wide-ranging impacts beyond selling its products. It can influence policy, change attitudes and help protect the planet’s future.

Zeus Kerravala is a principal analyst at ZK Research, a division of Kerravala Consulting. He wrote this article for SiliconANGLE.

Photo: Cisco