The arrival of global tech company Cisco in Birmingham provides a further shot in the arm for an already burgeoning industry in the city. As HENRY CARPENTER discovers from meeting two of its most senior executives who have been instrumental in the hub’s creation, this is a move based on far more than commercial success.
When Sarah Walker took on the role of chief executive of the UK and Ireland for international tech giant Cisco, there might have been many reasons why she found the offer too good to turn down.
First of all, being the UK head of a brand synonymous with cutting-edge innovation since it launched 40 years ago – and now a $240 billion company with more than 85,000 employees worldwide – surely comes with a certain cachet.
This is a company, remember, which names the NHS, local government, academic institutions, police forces and key elements of the national infrastructure as customers. And that’s just in the UK. It’s also said that almost all internet connections in the UK are powered by Cisco technology.
So the sheer prestige of heading the UK arm of such a business must have a certain allure.
But no, what made Walker fall in love with the company (her words) when Cisco initially came calling after a career rising through the ranks at BT, was its culture and purpose.
There’s little doubt that she means it too – that’s the conclusion after spending an illuminating couple of hours with her and Adele Every, managing director of public sector, in Cisco’s new office on the fourth floor of Birmingham City University’s epicentre of collaboration and innovation, STEAMhouse.
Walker has taken the train down from her home on the Wirral – and there’s a significance to this which we’ll touch on later – while Every has had a shorter distance to travel, from central Cheshire.
The formal launch of Cisco’s new space is due to take place during Birmingham Tech Week, and although the office walls are bare at the moment, they are soon to be covered with artwork from local students. Some employees have already moved in and are patient and obliging as our photographer positions our two subjects, both in the office and on the terrace outside.
To be clear, Cisco launching an office in Birmingham for the first time is very big news, not only for the region’s tech sphere and its wider business community, but also, arguably, for the city in general.
Excitement has been bubbling away since Cisco’s arrival was announced in May this year, but it’s been a two-way anticipation.
So, why Birmingham and why now?
Covid has something to answer for here when the appeal of working in an office with a vast bank of desks was less than it once was.
“We have become increasingly passionate about having regional hubs, and so post-Covid we looked at where we didn’t have a presence,” explains Every.
“Birmingham was a big and obvious gap to fill, so we tested the concept with a number of employees which would see us entering into an arrangement with the university and becoming part of an ecosystem working with the academics and start-ups on site. STEAMhouse was just a no-brainer.”
Birmingham is following on from Manchester which was Cisco’s first foray into the regions in terms of investing and sponsoring a hub enabling open collaboration with local government, academia and cyber-based start-ups.
“There’s a strong cyber presence in the north west, whereas Birmingham, with its proximity to hospitals and strong life sciences community, gives us a greater focus on health innovations and technologies,” says Every.
Walker adds: “Becoming part of a broader regional ecosystem is important to us and by expanding beyond our traditional office locations we can be even more present in the heart of business and communities.
“Our employees are now connecting with an even broader range of people and gaining new perspectives from these environments. These experiences complement and spread even further the diversity and collaboration we foster within our Cisco offices.”
While this year marks the company’s 40th anniversary, it actually established itself in the UK 35 years ago. However, in an industry which is evolving at an increasingly dizzying rate, the contrast between the pre-internet Cisco and where it is now must be almost unrecognisable, even in the space of four decades.
Walker says: “We have gone from being a networking organisation to what we believe is the company that will power critical national infrastructure in the AI era, securely and resiliently.
“What’s really exciting is that as we start to embrace what AI means for the communities, citizens, businesses, and actually the UK as a nation in terms of how competitive we are on a global forum, Cisco is absolutely at the heart of that.”
Now we’re moving towards the ‘culture and purpose’ at Cisco which prompts Walker to highlight one of the reasons why she feels such an affinity and commitment to her employer.
“Our UK & Ireland manifesto outlines a vision that we will power a digitally inclusive future for all – not just from a business perspective but more importantly how it manifests in communities and at a society level as well. That’s really, really important to us here.”
Walker admits to being almost belligerent in championing the regions and removing the traditional focus of enterprise away from London.
“Talent isn’t tethered to the capital city. When you look at somewhere like the West Midlands and the different initiatives and strengths of its tech industry, it’s really important that we play our part in ensuring that the skills are there to support the industry.”
Walker and Every share a passion for digital and social inclusion – and the two go very much hand in hand in their view.
It’s about communities feeling more connected, they say, and a key Cisco initiative in helping to achieve that is its Networking Academy. This social value programme sees Cisco effectively train some 100,000 people a year – and BCU was one of the first institutions to partner on it in the UK.
As Every says: “There is no point digitising regions with smart city concepts if the citizens don’t have the right digital skills to interact with the new and evolving technology. So, our Networking Academy is super important and the skills training that people can gain now is so vast.”
Walker adds: “It is not always particularly simple for citizens to access digital skills, so we are working with bodies like Skills England to support a more standardised approach to help facilitate this.
“We have been running some pilots with DWP and we are looking at taking these platforms into job centres to help people gain access to skills.
“We were part of a recent AI Workforce Consortium report and one of the stats that came from that is that 78% of all roles will require proficiency in AI skills. When you think about how much of our population is still not AI native, that’s quite a staggering statistic.
“Therefore, it is a real imperative to accelerate both the awareness of what skills look like in the modern workforce, and how we enable people to access them so that they’re not fearful of what technology can do to help them. A lot of it is down to demystification.
“The outreach approaches we take are important to us, and this year we launched the Discover Tech programme which is focused on reaching children from a work experience age. We’ve launched this nationally and we’ve got five other partners from across the tech industry on board with an aim of reaching 7,000 children per year.
“Birmingham will be one of the main cities in which we do it. But again, that’s about raising that awareness of the age that we need to engage children. They might well be in communities which don’t have as much access to the tech industry and understand what opportunities actually exist for them.”
The theme of digital and social inclusion is one to which both Walker and Every return to frequently.
And it makes sense, not as some sort of feelgood concept, or even as a staunch CSR scheme, but it stands to reason that if society isn’t encouraged to keep pace with the rate of change in tech, there will be a broadening of the gap between what is accessible and what’s out of reach.
Yes, Cisco will continue to innovate and drive from a tech perspective, but the aim is to take the cities, regions and citizens with it.
This is where the purpose becomes as important as the tech, and as someone succinctly put it to Walker as a responsibility for Cisco – it’s not just about raising the bar, it’s about raising the floor at the same time.
One element of the whole tech evolution which raises its head with increasing regularity is cyber security – and there have been several high-profile instances recently where systems have been breached with potentially dire consequences to the affected organisation, its supply chain links and sometimes the end consumer.
“If you think of how technology has evolved for organisations over the last 20 to 30 years, having a secure fabric across all of that is a very, very complex domain,” says Walker. “And I believe that on average most businesses have something like 56 different security vendors and between every vendor there is a gap; that is the challenge that businesses face today.
“For us it’s not just about providing the connectivity, it’s about resilient connectivity in an AI era. As we continue to develop more AI capability naturally, the threat increases with that.”
Every adds: “Security has always been important but what’s changed is the era of AI. Bad actors have access to these AI tools that can target threats and can do so at scale. The challenge has always been there but the rise of AI has supercharged it.”
On this issue Walker finishes by saying: “Our approach is to behave as if the bad actor will get in and enable businesses to really think about how they identify, contain and remediate as quickly as possible.”
The extent of Cisco’s capabilities is staggering, and a prime reason why it is such a feather in Birmingham’s cap that it has been chosen as the site of a key regional hub.
As an example, in Ukraine, Cisco has been helping to defend the country’s critical infrastructure against cyberattacks, established connectivity in schools and shelters, and is providing Ukrainians with IT education to build their digital skills and employability. Many of these initiatives are spearheaded and carefully coordinated by Cisco’s Country Digital Acceleration programme, in partnership with local ecosystem partners and supported by the Ukrainian government.
Walker also points to the fact that today it is one of the biggest partners to the hyperscalers – those vast cloud providers which operate massive data centres.
“The fact that they are choosing and trusting Cisco as a choice for their AI era is exciting,” she says.
It is an absorbing conversation, and what lends even more credibility to Birmingham being a comfortable fit in Cisco’s UK strategy is the very people flying its flag as such a suitable site.
Walker is Coventry born and bred and started her professional life at BT selling analogue phones on a temporary contract straight after her A levels. This started a 25-year relationship with BT – which sponsored her to read maths, stats and computing at Liverpool John Moores University – ultimately leading her to the position of director for corporate public sector in the north of England.
Indeed, she was instrumental in BT opening the 2 Snow Hill office as its northern HQ in Birmingham’s city centre.
One of BT’s many partners was Cisco, and in 2022 she was approached by her current employer and hasn’t looked back since, taking on the chief executive role 15 months ago.
She certainly has an affinity with Birmingham, and she is very positive on what she sees as a rich pool of talent and opportunity north of the M25.
Every, meanwhile, can thank a quirk of fate for the start of the career path that would lead her to Cisco. When at Manchester Metropolitan University she identified L’Oreal as her chosen company for work placement, someone else nabbed that opportunity, and she was sent to Hewlett Packard in Reading instead.
“It was fate really,” she says. “My eyes were opened, and it was a sort of wow, this is what a career in tech could look like . . . and that was it.”
After returning to HP, where she worked for a few years, she then went to work for Capgemini, a global leader in consulting and technology services, where she became a VP working on programmes of national importance such as Brexit and then the furlough scheme.
“I’d been at Capgemini for 16 years when the opportunity here arose. I was looking for something different and it was at a time when we were all stuck in our homes during lockdown doing similar things day to day. After an amazing 16 years with Capgemini, I decided it was time for a new exciting adventure.”
In terms of their experience, what they’ve achieved and where they’ve achieved it, their credentials could not be more impeccable for a purpose-minded, innovation-driven and fiercely ambitious tech heavyweight like Cisco, let alone for launching and leading a Birmingham office.
And if this is good news for Birmingham, even better news lies at the end of Walker’s final thoughts on the prospect of bringing Cisco to her home region.
“Our office is in the middle of what is already a vibrant ecosystem, and with close proximity to universities. The opportunity for us to continue the work that we’re doing in both the academic and business sectors is huge.
“There is already momentum created around tech talent in the region, and we want to play a big role in that.
“I think we’re only just getting started in terms of what this will mean both for us and the region – and we’re hoping that we’re treading a path that others will follow.”
With this in mind, Cisco’s presence might just represent a seismic uptick in fortunes for Birmingham and its tech industry.
There are few, if any, higher profile personalities pursuing real and positive change in Birmingham than Tom Brady, the NFL legend who is part of the Knighthead group which bought Birmingham City FC in 2023. He has worked with Cisco on a number of global initiatives, and has this to say about the tech firm’s launch in the city:
“Cisco’s arrival in Birmingham marks an exciting chapter for the city. Having seen first-hand the passion, drive, and sense of community here, I know that Cisco’s investment is another significant step in establishing Birmingham as a leading hub for technology and innovation.
“Technology has the power to transform communities, create opportunities, and connect people in meaningful ways. This vision is at the heart of Cisco’s purpose and philosophy, and I’m looking forward to seeing the positive impact it will have as part of Birmingham’s ongoing success story.”
