Cisco's compute customers want to be more environmentally sustainable, but those ambitions add yet another complex layer to modern IT challenges, according to Jeremy Foster, SVP of Cisco's compute business.

Enterprises are worried about managing the "big complex world" of applications that run in different data centers and multiple clouds, and that's a melting pot of operational challenges on its own.

"Now there's all this focus on how do I do that sustainably, which brings [another] angle to something else ... they have to worry about," Foster told SDxCentral. "Everybody thinks it's a good idea. But it is another level of complexity."

While Foster noted the sustainability discussion isn't limited to the compute business, and it actually crosses "the entire gamut here at Cisco," data center infrastructure sustainability garners a significant amount of attention alone.

By 2027, 75% of organizations are predicted to have a data center sustainability program in place, according to Gartner research. Analysts expect that leap (from less than 5% in 2022) will be fueled by a combination of stakeholder pressures and the desire to optimize costs.

"Responsibilities for sustainability are increasingly being passed down from CIOs to infrastructure and operations leaders to improve IT’s environmental performance, particularly around data centers," Gartner Senior Principal Analyst Autumn Stanish explained. "This has led many down the path of greater spend and investment in environmental solutions,"

Stanish noted, however, the environmental or climate angle "shouldn’t be the only focus" and cited positive impacts environmental, social and governance (ESG) progress can have on a company's brand, reputation, innovation, resilience and ability to attract quality talent.

The other topic Cisco's customer discussions tend to focus on is the driving factors of sustainable data center operations. Depending on geography, regulatory measures and governance issues aren't the major drivers of data center ESG initiatives. When issues like elevated energy costs and economic pressures come into play, "this is a point where it not only does it make a lot of sense for the planet, it really makes a lot of sense for business because we have to figure out how to optimize around cost," Foster said.

When spending money is involved, "ultimately it is operations, and operations is all about optimizing around your set of goals, and now ESG is one of those," he explained. "And that brings you back to the data center," where ample opportunities for reductions in energy consumption can lead to lower IT bills.

Data centers, especially for larger enterprises, can require significant amounts of infrastructure and electricity in concentrated areas. "Customers are certainly looking at that [and] saying, how do we modernize? What are the best practices? ... They know they can make a dramatic impact toward their ESG goals in a short period of time by focusing on the data center," Foster said.

And while those data center sustainability conversations usually start at using tools for visibility, control and workload performance monitoring to manage energy consumption in the data center, these ambitions usually bleed out to the rest of the organization. Enterprises are also wont to packing products and purchase from suppliers more sustainably. "Putting that together is where it starts to be the overall piece, not just the data center, not just electricity," he added.