The new suite underscores AI’s increasing role in delivering personalized customer experiences while ensuring compliance with industry regulations.

Celona Aerloc: next-gen private 5G wireless security for OT and IT systems

• Extended SIM-based authentication
• Unified zero-trust enforcement
• Dynamic and distributed policy enforcement
• Air-gapping between IT and OT networks on a common private 5G network

Celona Frequency: expanded channel partner program

Final thoughts

In the communications business, the artificial intelligence wars are on.

As an analyst, I tend to focus on market transitions as that’s when significant share change happens. When the cloud first came to unified communications and contact centers, Webex established itself as a leader, which enabled it to be acquired by Cisco Systems Inc. The pandemic and working from home shift saw Microsoft Teams and Zoom take a disproportionate share.

Now, the industry is on the precipice of the next major transition: the infusion of AI into customer and employee experience platforms. This creates the opportunity for challengers to build a better mousetrap and wrestle some share away from the market leaders. This week, Cisco is holding its WebexOne event, and it’s using the event to showcase its AI-driven innovations targeting employee collaboration and customer service to be a disruptor in the market.

Cisco has invested heavily in AI across its portfolio, but the collaboration business unit has led the way. Webex made several AI-related announcements that address the broader trends in workplace automation and customer service transformation, particularly within hybrid work environments and the evolving demands of customer expectations.

I attended a briefing with senior Cisco executives to preview the announcements. Aruna Ravichandran, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for Cisco Collaboration, led the briefing, which was joined by Jeetu Patel (pictured), Cisco’s executive vice president and chief product officer, and Anurag Dhingra, senior vice president and general manager for Cisco Collaboration.

Patel set the stage by saying that the company had boosted innovation in a way that has embedded it in the team culture. “It’s just a part of how they work,” he said. “And thinking about what we are doing with AI right now will blow you away. The first time I saw it, I couldn’t believe it was this good, and the more you start using it, the more you get excited about it.”

That set a high bar. Here are details on all the AI-related announcements:

Enhancing employee collaboration

One of the key announcements at WebexOne was the introduction of new AI-powered tools to improve collaboration and employee experiences within the workplace. These innovations include AI-enhanced spatial meeting capabilities, more efficient audio management tools, and the integration of virtual assistants into workflows. The company unveiled several new tools, including Spatial Meetings and the Ceiling Microphone Pro.

With Spatial Meetings, Cisco aims to offer more immersive virtual collaboration experiences by using advanced 3D video technologies to make virtual meetings feel more physically present.

“Just to jog your memory, at the beginning of this year, Apple launched the Vision Pro product, and Webex was ready on day one to launch with Apple,” Dhingra said. “And our app for Vision Pro is the editor’s choice in the App Store because we leverage the true powers of the platform, things like completely different cameras and the ability to have tasking in a much more effective way.”

He added that Cisco is bringing Spatial Meetings to all conference rooms. The Ceiling Microphone Pro supports flexible and adaptive meeting environments by automatically adjusting its audio capture to accommodate room changes or speaker movements.

“This is the industry’s first adaptive AI microphone,” Dhingra said. “It’s zero-touch. It’s plug and play, configuring itself to deliver an amazing experience for everyone in the room.”

It appears that Cisco designed these solutions with the hybrid workplace in mind, addressing the challenge of keeping remote and on-site workers equally engaged and productive, regardless of their physical location. Webex has certainly had its ups and downs through the pandemic, hybrid work, and return to work, but its room systems have been and continue to be the best in class.

Improving IT productivity

The second part of Cisco’s strategy is improving information technology teams’ ability to manage hybrid workspaces more efficiently. With tools such as the Workspace Designer and Smart Diagnostics, IT teams can quickly diagnose issues and manage spaces using AI for automated solutions. This shift toward automation reduces manual tasks and increases the capacity for scaling operations, making it easier for organizations to manage the increasingly complex requirements of hybrid work.

Dhingra said Smart Diagnostics will help IP admins focus on critical problems. “AI will give you a lot of context. And when you combine that with an AI, this is a true enabler for at-scale deployments.” He said this will enable a small IT staff to manage thousands of rooms.

Workspace Designer creates a 3-D model of a conference room or meeting space and allows an administrator to place tables, cameras, microphones, displays and other meeting equipment to assess the design’s effectiveness. The tool shows where the audio gaps are, how complete the video coverage is, and other aspects that could cause a less-than-optimal meeting experience.

The focus on increasing the capabilities of IT staff mirrors industry trends in which technology is increasingly expected to handle routine tasks, freeing up human resources for higher-level problem-solving and strategic work. Cisco’s innovations, such as integrating the Desk Phone 9800 Series with performance monitoring tools, further illustrate the importance of seamless, tech-driven support for hybrid work environments.

The Workspace Designer addresses a gap in Cisco’s go-to-market strategy regarding meeting rooms. The company has invested heavily in building out its offices in Atlanta, Paris, New York, and other locations to showcase Cisco technology. Though customers who toured the facility liked what they saw, converting this into sales was a challenge as it wasn’t always obvious what equipment to put where. Workspace Designer enables customers to try things virtually, ensuring they are purchasing the best possible technology for each space.

Customer service transformation with AI-driven solutions

Cisco also announced new AI tools aimed at transforming customer service. The Webex AI Agent and the AI Agent Studio mark Cisco’s attempt to modernize how companies interact with customers. These solutions tap into conversational AI to offer customers quicker, more effective self-service options, eliminating the need for prolonged interactions with human agents for routine inquiries.

By introducing the AI Agent, Cisco is positioning itself in a market increasingly focused on reducing customer wait times and improving satisfaction. This technology uses conversational intelligence to efficiently resolve customer queries, which Cisco says will improve customer satisfaction scores. This type of automation has become more critical as businesses face higher customer expectations for instant responses, driven by an overall shift toward digital-first interactions.

One notable feature of the Webex AI Agent is its capability to handle simple inquiries autonomously, allowing human agents to focus on more complex customer issues. What was interesting about the Cisco demo was the quality of the virtual agent. During the demo, the speaker started asking about human resources benefits and, at one point, interrupted the agent and asked a new question. The virtual agent was able to pivot quickly, much like a human.

This should have some significant implications for customer experience. Historically, we have deferred to text-based conversations with bots and virtual agents because the audio experience was always bad. What Cisco showed was conversational and lifelike, enabling customers to talk to a brand naturally and have their inquiries answered.

As the technology improves, I predict that the industry will eventually reach a point where customers will prefer the virtual agent over a human one for simple transactions. The same shift happened in banking about 25 years ago. Early in the shift to online banking, many people pushed back as banking was viewed as something you should talk to a human about. However, today, every bank offers feature-rich mobile and online banking, which people prefer today.

The company designed AI Agent Studio to simplify the setup of AI-based customer service, allowing IT administrators and business users to deploy these solutions more quickly. This low-code environment underscores the industry’s movement toward empowering nontechnical users to manage complex technological systems, a trend that allows companies to scale more effectively.

Some final thoughts

These announcements reflect AI’s growing role in workplace collaboration and customer service across industries. By improving employee experiences and customer satisfaction, Cisco is tapping into two key areas of organizational performance.

There is a push to make work environments more engaging, collaborative, and efficient for employees, particularly in hybrid or fully remote settings. For customers, the introduction of automated agents and intelligent support tools addresses the increased demand for quicker, more effective service solutions.

Cisco’s investment in AI-powered tools aligns with broader industry trends where companies seek ways to reduce operational costs while improving customer and employee satisfaction. Including AI in nearly every aspect of their product portfolio also speaks to the broader expectation that AI will play a foundational role in business operations and customer interactions.

However, the significance of these announcements also hinges on how successfully these tools can be implemented in real-world scenarios. Though Cisco has outlined several use cases for these new AI features, the practical challenges of deployment, integration with existing systems, and user adoption rates will likely determine the long-term impact of these innovations.

Cisco’s announcements underscore the company’s ambition to leverage AI to address critical challenges in hybrid work environments and customer service. These innovations suggest that Cisco is positioning itself to meet the evolving needs of both employees and customers by offering scalable, intelligent and automated solutions.

Amazon’s prowess in AI, not just in contact centers but in all things data, should give it a unique opportunity to deliver more AI, faster than a pure play that typically needs to partner in this area.

What this means for the market

• Competitive positioning in AI infrastructure: AMD’s dual-component approach, which separates the front-end and back-end functions in AI networking, can optimize performance across the entire AI infrastructure. By targeting hyperscalers such as Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, AMD is positioning itself to compete directly with Nvidia Corp. and Intel Corp., which have a strong presence in AI and data center markets. The Salina DPU’s and Pollara 400 NIC’s significant performance improvements, including up to twice the bandwidth for DPUs and six times the RDMA performance for NICs, emphasize the company’s ambition to lead in efficiency and scalability for data-intensive AI applications. This could intensify the competition, particularly in high-performance computing and AI cloud environments.
• Hyperscaler adoption and ecosystem expansion: Collaboration with major cloud providers during the sampling phase is a critical step. These relationships will validate the technology and signal to the market that AMD’s solutions are enterprise-ready and can be trusted at scale. Given the open ecosystem of networking around the UEC-ready Pollara 400, AMD is positioning itself to play a key role in the broader adoption of RDMA alternatives, potentially influencing software standards and shaping the future of AI networking infrastructure. The success of these products could lead to wider acceptance among second-tier cloud providers and enterprise customers.
• Timeline and market readiness: With product availability set for the first half of 2025, AMD is giving itself time to fine-tune performance, gather feedback from early testers, and gear up production. However, this timeline also provides a window of opportunity for competitors to release their own next-gen AI networking solutions. AMD’s ability to meet or exceed the performance expectations it has set will be crucial. Any delays or underperformance could enable Nvidia or Intel to gain ground in this fast-evolving sector.
• Impact on AI-driven workloads: The clear focus on optimizing accelerator-to-accelerator communication and the high throughput supported by these networking components reflect the growing importance of reducing latency and increasing data transfer speeds in AI workloads. This could have broad implications for AI model training, inference workloads, and real-time data processing, particularly in industries like autonomous driving, robotics, and advanced analytics. By offering performance improvements that significantly outpace traditional technologies, AMD’s solutions could influence cloud service providers’ decisions on how to build out next-gen AI clusters and data center infrastructure, potentially leading to broader industry shifts in AI networking technologies.

What this means for the industry

• Pressure on competitors: Nvidia’s dominance in AI accelerators and data center GPUs may face new pressure from AMD’s networking solutions, particularly if AMD can demonstrate measurable improvements in end-to-end AI infrastructure performance. The move to support the UltraEthernet Consortium further underscores AMD’s commitment to open standards, which may attract customers looking for alternatives to proprietary systems.
• Consolidation of AI networking ecosystems: As more cloud providers and enterprise customers move to adopt high-performance AI infrastructures, the role of DPUs and AI NICs will become more critical. AMD’s emphasis on programmability, scalability and ecosystem support positions it well to be part of the growing consolidation of AI networking ecosystems, where fewer, more powerful players may dominate.

Some final thoughts

C1, a technology solutions provider focused on integrated information technology services and digital transformation strategies, recently unveiled a set of solutions intended to address some key trends in the enterprise IT sector, particularly around modernization, cloud services and security.

Organizations face increasing complexity due to remote and hybrid work environments and fast-evolving security challenges. This has caused an interesting juxtaposition for organizations, as a need to modernize leads to complexity.

A recent ZK Research study found that 93% of organizations believe their IT infrastructure to be more critical to business operations than just two years ago. However, 80% agree that complexity has grown. If businesses are to modernize, they must first find a way to solve the complexity problem.

The solutions C1 unveiled address networking, security and communications. The company says it has integrated the solutions to streamline operations, improve business resilience and simplify customer deployment.

The new C1 solutions include:

Communications

• RingCentral RingEX and RingCentral CX, both powered by C1CX: RingCentral EX is one of the leading unified communications platforms, and CX is its contact center solution. C1’s “C1CX” is a proactive, managed services overlay. Customers can use the managed service to move from proof of concept to production quickly. C1 will then handle 24x7x365 technical support, change management, carrier management and other functions to ensure the service is up and running with the best possible quality.

Infrastructure

• C1 Managed Internal Broadband Services: Designed to monitor, administer, manage and operate broadband services, this offering enhances resiliency at reduced costs for K-12 organizations. Schools have become increasingly reliant on their network to deliver new ways of educating but typically have tiny IT teams. Schools can use the service to offload the management complexity.
• Total Security Network: Targeted at the public sector, finance, healthcare, hospitality, transportation and logistics industries, this solution combines Extreme Networks and Verkada technologies with C1’s managed services to deliver physical security powered with an upgraded network.

Security:

• Risk Mitigation Solution Suite: This suite includes WAVES Security, Asset Management-as-a-Service and Vulnerability Management-as-a-Service, offering a simplified approach to asset inventory, vulnerability identification and prioritized risk mitigation.
• C1 Managed Next-Generation Firewalls: This service combines C1 Managed Services with Palo Alto Networks’ machine learning-powered NGFWs to provide AI-enabled protection, compliance assurance and business resiliency.

Historically, a solution provider such as C1 would have come to market independently, addressing communications, infrastructure and security needs. This was sufficient a decade ago as technology operated in silos.

Today, that has changed. When a change is made to the network, it can impact security and communications. A security update has network ramifications, and so on. This motivated C1 to offer these as an advanced technology suite.

As companies continue to develop hybrid work strategies, bring in artificial intelligence, and shift to hybrid cloud environments, the technology interdependencies will continue to grow, as will the level of complexity.

Managed services are an excellent option for organizations with lean IT teams or companies that want their technology teams to shift from spending most of their time keeping the lights on to more strategic initiatives.

Final thoughts

C1 has positioned these new services to meet the challenges in the evolving IT landscape. With a mix of networking, security and communications services, the company addresses multiple challenges businesses face in a single package. This comprehensive approach enables enterprises to deploy integrated solutions rather than managing several systems across different vendors. If you want to simplify your IT operations, this is the way to do it.

In addition, C1’s focus on deployment services through managed offerings recognizes the increasing demand for service-based IT consumption models. Many organizations, particularly mid-size businesses and enterprises, prefer to outsource complex IT needs to third-party experts who can ensure best practices and more efficient rollouts. This positions C1 to tap into an expanding market for managed IT and cloud services.

IT modernization, cybersecurity and remote work will continue shaping the industry, and C1’s strategic focus positions it to capitalize on the needs of businesses that are navigating their digital transformation journeys.

The collaborative workplace vendor is integrating productivity-enhancing AI workflows across multiple offerings, all with the intent to save users’ time.

I recently attended a pre-briefing on Zoomtopia, the Zoom conference taking place from October 9-10, in San Jose. The briefing highlighted the announcements, innovations, and product developments that the company will unveil this week. The intro music to the discussion was “Pump Up the Jam,” which Zoom transcribed in the meeting like this:

Unknown Speaker? Any AI worth its salt would know that was Technotronic’s 1989 song from Pump Up the Jam: The Album. In theory, Zoom could send the song to SHAZAM or another service to find out who authored the song. In reality, I’m sure Zoom has several other customer feature requests that would jump ahead of song identification, but it might make a cool feature. Although I’m not sure the crowd was jumping—analysts rarely do—we were undoubtedly anticipating the discussion, which promised to include insights from key Zoom executives. Chief Product Officer Smita Hashim and members of the company’s product marketing team outlined major updates across Zoom’s product suite, especially the expanded use of AI technologies across various platforms. A focus in the briefing was the launch of Zoom AI Companion 2.0 and new features aimed at improving productivity and collaboration.

New Zoom AI Companion and Other Launches

Smita Hashim began by noting the rapid pace of development since Zoomtopia 2023: over 3,000 features launched, including significant products such as the Zoom AI Companion, Zoom Workplace, and Zoom Docs AI. Positioned as a generative AI assistant, Zoom designed AI Companion (available at no additional cost to paid users) to enhance user productivity across various functions, from meetings to document creation. One of the central features of the AI Companion is its federated model approach, which integrates multiple AI models like OpenAI and Zoom’s proprietary models to optimize quality and reduce costs. The AI Companion works across various Zoom platforms—including meetings, phone, chat, and events—to help users with meeting summaries, transcription, and task management tasks. Importantly, Zoom ensures user privacy by not using customer data for AI training purposes, a stance presented as an industry-leading approach to AI trust and safety. Zoom AI Companion has been generally available for about a year. To get a sense of how the product has done in the field, I asked Joe Rittenhouse, Co-CEO of Converged Technology Professionals, one of Zoom’s top resellers. He said, “We have been impressed with how fast Zoom has innovated. Customer feedback has been positive, and adoption far exceeds our initial expectations.” This is consistent with the discussions I have had with customers. Meeting summaries, transcripts, smart recordings, and other features are very sticky. The key is to get customers to try it -- once users do, they soon find it hard to live without them.

V2 of Zoom AI Companion: a More Robust Personal Assistant

During the briefing, the company introduced Zoom AI Companion 2.0 as a more robust, personal AI assistant that can work across the Zoom Workplace. The initial iteration offered productivity-boosting features like meeting summarization, asking questions of the AI during a meeting, creating and refining documents, assistance while composing email and chat messages, summarization of chat and SMS threads, and improving phone calls. The updated iteration of the AI Companion will provide users with contextualized assistance, such as identifying unread messages, summarizing meetings, and suggesting actions across various communication platforms. Zoom intends to extend the AI Companion’s functionality to integrate with external applications like Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar so users can manage workflows more efficiently. Zoom revealed key capabilities, including the AI's personalized assistance and remembering user history and tasks to suggest relevant actions. With this release, Zoom says it will expand AI-driven productivity across its workplace ecosystem. As proof, the company says customization through the new AI Studio will enable users to tailor their AI experience, including creating industry-specific workflows or integrating custom data like employee handbooks into the assistant’s functionality. While there are many things an AI assistant could do, Zoom has prioritized laborious, information-rich tasks, which is where users should see the most value. I know very few people who are good at putting together post-meeting notes or have the time to scan emails for unread messages. These new features should continue to give people time back during their day, a commodity I know all wish we had more of.

Customizing and Personalizing AI

Zoom is introducing a Custom AI Companion Add-On to cater to diverse organizational needs. Customizations include integration with third-party applications like Workday and Jira and the ability to automate more complex workflows across departments. For example, a marketing team could use AI Companion to integrate multiple backoffice systems and automate tasks such as provisioning new software for employees. Zoom also emphasized its AI Studio, in which users can fine-tune models by adding domain-specific knowledge and creating advanced AI skills tailored to specific business needs. The studio’s customization options extend to AI-driven meeting summaries, where professionals can generate industry-specific reports or documents based on predefined criteria. The ability to work with third parties addresses one of the biggest challenges for AI assistants today – AI overload. It seems every application now has its own AI assistant, co-pilot, or whatever name the vendor chose. This is valuable but creates AI silos, which can make work more complex. By integrating with other vendors, AI should be able to work cross application with existing tools and applications, making it more valuable for all.

AI-Driven Productivity and Workplace Enhancements

Theresa Larkin, Global Lead for Zoom Workplace Product Marketing, expanded on the integration of AI within the Zoom Workplace. She highlighted how AI Companion helps streamline workflows and reduce information overload from emails, meetings, and chats. She added that introducing Zoom Tasks is a critical feature that will use AI to detect, recommend, and complete tasks based on ongoing conversations. Again, this feature is designed to simplify the complicated nature of work. Users spend so much time, about 40% by my estimates, managing work rather than doing work. Having an AI help focus and understand what to prioritize is invaluable. Another feature that boosts productivity is the AI-generated meeting agenda and real-time meeting summaries, which will organize meeting outcomes based on the agenda’s structure. The company designed these innovations to optimize meeting effectiveness by ensuring critical topics are addressed, and action items are clearly defined and tracked. So if someone implores you to pump up the jam, it’ll definitely get done.

Industry-Specific Innovations

Zoom says it plans to introduce industry-specific solutions for sectors such as education, healthcare, and frontline industries. For example, the AI Companion for Education will assist teachers in generating lesson plans, monitoring student engagement, and summarizing class discussions in real-time. Similarly, healthcare professionals will benefit from automating custom medical dictionaries and clinical notes, reducing administrative burdens and enabling better patient care. In industries like retail and manufacturing, Zoom will introduce Zoom Workplace for Frontline, a mobile-first solution designed to address frontline workers’ specific communication and work management needs. I was glad to see Zoom take the vertical route, as it shows an understanding that the needs of different workers vary. The AI Companion needs of a teacher are dramatically different than those of a knowledge worker which vary from a front-line worker. These other flavors of AI Companion will help Zoom gain adoption across a broader set of users.

Customer Experience Enhancements

In the pre-briefing, Michelle Couture, Global Product Marketing Lead for Customer Experience, spoke about Zoom’s AI-driven customer experience solutions to improve self-service and agent-assisted customer support. She said the company will upgrade the Zoom Virtual Agent with multi-intent query handling, which should reduce the need for live agent intervention by resolving more complex customer inquiries. In addition, Zoom Contact Center will come with AI expert assistant, which integrates knowledge base articles and CRM data to guide agents through customer interactions more effectively. Zoom also enhances supervisors' tools, such as supervisor flagging and auto quality management, which provide real-time insights into agent performance and customer interactions. These tools optimize customer service efficiency while maintaining high customer satisfaction standards. Zoom as a very late entrant to the contact center, so late that I wasn’t sure many would look at it. Initially, Zoom’s ability to compete was driven by high customer loyalty, so some decision-makers were willing to give them a look despite only having a basic offering. Since then, the company has been “all in” on CCaaS, with CEO Eric Yuan as the GM. This intense focus has enabled Zoom to catch up in a highly competitive industry quickly.

Some Final Thoughts

The Zoomtopia news underscores the company’s strategy of integrating AI across its platforms to enhance user productivity, streamline workflows, and provide customized AI experiences across industries. Zoom’s decision to offer AI capabilities at no additional cost makes advanced technology accessible to a wide range of businesses, removing a barrier to entry. By focusing on responsible AI usage, improving customer experiences, and offering industry-specific solutions, Zoom continues to expand its product suite to meet the diverse needs of its global user base. As these features roll out, Zoom’s ongoing developments will likely drive further adoption across small businesses and large enterprises. Whether it will pump up the jam is another question.

AI-powered workflow automation and collaboration

• ServiceNow Employee Center for Zoom Workplace: Enables access to benefits information and human resources within the Zoom interface.
• Zoom Contact Center for ServiceNow: Embeds Zoom Contact Center capabilities within the ServiceNow platform, improving information access for agents and facilitating quicker resolution of customer issues.
• Ticket Collaboration with Zoom Team Chat: Allows service teams to work collaboratively in real-time on customer inquiries, eliminating back-and-forth communications and providing better customer service experiences.

How this partnership fits into overall industry trends

1. AI-driven workflow automation and productivity: The industry is increasingly focused on AI solutions that can handle administrative and organizational tasks, enabling faster decision-making. This partnership represents the shift from simple automation to more complex, multistep workflows by leveraging AI to convert meeting discussions into actionable tasks. This can improve productivity by reducing the time spent on manual follow-ups and enabling real-time progress.
2. AI as a collaborative partner: Increasingly, AI functions as a collaborative partner rather than a standalone tool. Zoom AI Companion and Now Assist’s capabilities demonstrate how AI can seamlessly support team discussions, summarizing key points and automating administrative processes to allow employees to focus on high-impact tasks.
3. Emphasis on integrated user experiences: As AI becomes more embedded in enterprises, there is an emphasis on creating cohesive, cross-platform experiences. This partnership reduces the need to switch between multiple applications by allowing Zoom and ServiceNow to work together more cohesively. The seamless transfer of data from communication tools to project management platforms can significantly enhance efficiency and reduce the risk of errors.
4. Scaling AI across business functions: The ServiceNow/Zoom integration highlights how AI can work across various business domains, from customer service and HR to strategic portfolio management. This scalability enables organizations to use a unified AI approach for diverse functions, fostering consistency and improved performance.
5. Responsiveness to employee demand for AI tools: Employees increasingly seek AI tools to handle repetitive tasks and enhance productivity. Integrating ServiceNow and Zoom AI technologies should help meet this demand by offering user-friendly solutions that deliver immediate and practical benefits, such as reducing administrative burdens and summarizing complex discussions.
6. AI-powered decision-making and strategic growth: Beyond task automation, this partnership represents AI’s role in supporting strategic business growth and decision-making. By offering real-time summaries, task identification, and workflow automation, the integration supports organizational strategies from planning through execution, driving business agility and growth.

Some final thoughts

• The launch of Cloud Rewind — based on the April acquisition of Appranix — which integrates cloud-native distributed application recovery and rebuild capabilities.
• Availability of the Commvault Cloud cyber resilience platform on Amazon Web Services.
• Expanded support for Google Cloud, including advanced cloud backup and cyber recovery for Google Workspace.
• A joint cyber readiness solution with Pure Storage Inc. to help European Union organizations comply with evolving and increasingly stringent data security regulations.

Competition and consolidation continue to change the cybersecurity market

Expanding into the AWS universe

Commvault doubles down on Google Cloud

Helping financial institutions meet stringent EU regulations

At last week’s Climate Week and the Global Citizen Festival in New York, both committed to making the world a better and more livable place for future generations, technology was viewed by many as the driving force to shift to a cleaner, more sustainable future.

One of the more interesting events was held at the Midtown Accenture Innovation Hub, where industry leaders shared insights on digital innovation. The panelists discussed strategies and cutting-edge technologies transforming the global energy sector — from harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to redefining nuclear energy with small modular reactors, or SMRs. Here are the five key takeaways from that discussion:

1. Policymakers need a comprehensive strategy

Technology’s role in the energy sector is complex. Therefore, policymakers and industry leaders must have a clear strategy for integrating AI and other digital tools into the energy ecosystem. The Sustainable Technology Policy Guide, published by the Information Technology Industry Council, or ITI, provides recommendations covering a wide range of topics, including grid modernization, resource efficiency and the use of AI to optimize energy usage.

The guide is a roadmap for building a sustainable energy economy that leverages AI and other emerging technologies to modernize energy management, reduce dependence on limited resources, and prevent energy shortages or disruptions, even as demand grows or unexpected events occur. By following the recommendations, governments can collaborate to innovate and develop new technologies.

“The issues at the intersection of clean energy generation, distribution and how it’s used effectively require action from all parties,” said Gordon Bitko, executive vice president for public sector at ITI. “It’s critically important to recognize that this is a global issue. The strategic consequences of the ability or inability to cleanly provide and power these technologies can disrupt economic and national security, not only here in the U.S. and for allied countries but also in the developing world. It’s a hard problem that requires all hands.”

2. Innovation is reducing electricity consumption

The U.S. has made significant efficiency gains in electricity consumption over the past decade. Bitko shared an intriguing statistic: From 2007 to 2022, the country’s electricity usage remained virtually flat, even as the population grew by 10% and the economy nearly doubled. In other words, technology has helped reduce energy use while supporting economic growth.

Most attendees I talked to afterwards were surprised to hear this statistic, as much has been made of rising energy use. The reality is that though more progress is needed, we have made strides in efficiency to accomplish so much more than we ever have while holding the energy line steady.

A prime example is the data center industry. Over the 2010s, data center capacity expanded by 550%, yet it required only 6% more electricity. This was achieved through innovation in energy management, such as advanced cooling systems, AI-driven workload distribution and optimized hardware design. Hence, it’s important to focus on efficiency to prevent energy demand from rising as more digital devices and technologies are used.

“Innovation is driving change and addressing challenges,” said Bitko. “We all survived the pandemic because of innovation. We could work from home. We allowed our children to be remotely educated. We could do medical care through telehealth appointments because of those innovations in technology and data centers. We need to continue to unlock and enable this so we can all share the benefits of AI and clean energy.”

3. AI Is a double-edged sword for energy use

AI is helping companies and governments better manage energy resources and plan for future needs. A key innovation is digital twins, which are virtual copies of physical objects or systems. Companies use digital twins to test and improve energy systems without changing the real versions. In urban planning, they can create detailed models of entire cities, which help make more informed decisions about energy use, transportation networks, and infrastructure development.

Many cities worldwide are now using digital twins, created with augmented reality and virtual reality, to make their environments more efficient instead of doing actual construction. However, there are concerns that AI’s high energy usage could undermine sustainability efforts.

For example, training a single ChatGPT AI query can produce as much carbon dioxide as several flights between San Francisco and New York. To address these concerns, companies need explicit strategies to balance AI’s benefits with its environmental impact.

“We can’t think about this in a vacuum,” said Charlie Moskowitz, lead for tech policy for the Americas region at Accenture. “Organizations need a roadmap and guiding principles. The Green Software Foundation, co-founded by Accenture, has created principles that help lower the carbon footprint of software code. We’re putting our money where our mouth is.”

4. SMRs are shaping the future of energy

Emerging technologies such as SMRs and long-duration energy storage are becoming vital components of the “energy mix,” meaning different energy sources that meet a region’s energy needs. SMRs provide a flexible and scalable way to use nuclear power, making them suitable for various applications.

Meanwhile, long-duration energy storage helps solve the problem of inconsistent energy sources such as wind and solar by storing extra energy when production is low. These advancements are expected to maintain grid stability and renewable energy.

Microsoft Corp. plans to reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear facility, which was once the site of a major nuclear incident in the 1970s. The reopening of Three Mile Island is part of a broader move that signals growing interest in nuclear power as a reliable energy source. Unlike in the past, when nuclear technology was less understood, significant advancements have been made in using new nuclear technologies like SMRs, which offer more flexibility and can be scaled up or down.

“It’s not 1950 anymore; we’ve learned much about nuclear power,” said Carla Frisch, acting executive director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Policy. “Here in the U.S., we have a lot of different types of facilities. We’re working with the private sector to try to speed up SMRs. We’ll see that at least in the next decade.”

5. Adoption requires collaboration and transparency

Broad adoption of sustainable technologies will require cooperation across industries and clear communication with consumers. Virtual power purchase agreements, or PPAs, allow multiple companies to pool their resources and jointly invest in renewable energy projects. By working together, companies can access sustainable energy options that might otherwise be out of reach.

“Virtual PPAs are becoming quite promising,” said Justin Murrill, senior manager of corporate sustainability at Advanced Micro Devices Inc. “To reach deeper into the supply chain or the value chain of other data centers, we have to bring together demand to make the economics work. The innovation of those virtual PPAs is now reaching a broader audience, and that’s critical for us to reach the next phases of the clean energy transition.”

Moreover, transparency around energy use and environmental impact is crucial. Providing consumers with easy-to-understand labels — similar to the Energy Star program for electronics — can empower them to make more informed choices. That’s why building a sustainable energy future will require a multifaceted approach that combines advanced technologies, policy frameworks and industrywide cooperation. With AI and other digital innovations at the forefront, a unique opportunity exists to reshape the existing energy landscape.

Looking ahead

Mary de Wysocki, Cisco Systems Inc.’s chief sustainability officer, observed a mindset shift within the sustainability community from understanding challenges to developing actionable strategies, suggesting a collective approach moving forward. According to de Wysocki, companies treat their sustainability goals with the same seriousness and accuracy as their financial reporting.

That means using strict standards and detailed data to back up their environmental claims, just as they would for financial statements. By doing this, companies build trust and transparency around their climate actions.

“Our partners are coming together and saying we have the same 2030 goal,” said Wysocki. “One of the things we’ve seen for all of us is enhancing our governance. So, when you hear a climate claim, it has the same rigor as our financial data. This is going to help our consumers, our partners, and our customers when we say something that they know is backed up. But also, when we continue shifting from voluntary to involuntary, we’ll be ready.”

Final note

The event’s focus was AI and sustainability, and I’d like to offer my commentary. There has been tremendous scrutiny of the impact of generative AI on power consumption. The panel discussed the use case where a ChatGPT has the same carbon impact as several plane flights. To help with that, Hope King from Axios, the moderator of one of the panels, suggested that apps should have some carbon indicators on them to help the user understand energy use.

In theory, that makes sense, but the reality is that one can’t measure the use of generative AI without comparing it with the alternative. For example, King quipped,” If I’m going to be Face-Tuning a photo, I want to know how many trees I’m killing by using AI.”

Though it might seem like FaceTune uses a lot of energy, it’s essential to understand the alternative. Without it, one might spend hours in PhotoShop editing the photo to do what generative AI can do in a few seconds. So, though gen AI does use more power than traditional search, it also accomplishes those tasks in a small fraction of the time.

AI in all forms is here to stay, and there are certainly implications for organizations’ sustainability goals. The wrong approach would be not using AI, as the benefits outweigh the negatives. With that being said, as de Wysoki pointed out, solving climate challenges requires a collaborative approach, as together we can do great things – which is why we all come together for Climate Week and Global Citizen every year. See you in 2025.