Having recently left Cisco I can say it is a company in decline. I joined very recently at the tail end of the John Chambers era. He was a fantastic leader with great vision and ability to inspire. He knew how to sell and how to appreciate technology and recognize good technology and good technology leaders. He came under justifiable criticism for some of the practices he used to enrich certain individuals at the company, including himself, but he also created an engine for innovation that built the company as it is today.
New CEO Chuck Robbins is a decent and well-intentioned guy, but sadly he is completely incapable of running the company. While he was able to sell all of the wonderful products given to him by Chambers and his leadership team, it was a fantasy to think a sales leader would somehow transform himself into the product visionary needed to leave an Innovative company into the future. He's floundering and lost without an ability to inspire his people or the ability to recognize those he could put in leadership positions who themselves would Inspire others. I don't think he understands technology in his gut and doesn't know how to recognize the ones who do.
The turmoil in the product organization is a reflection of the CEOs inability to make good choices in this area. He can't pick people and he can't pick winning solutions to invest in. The Frantic and haphazard strategy of acquiring companies is the only thing they can figure out how to do. Even that doesn't seem to have a cohesive strategy. Cisco is reduced to grabbing bright shiny objects in the hope that one of them will magically become the future.
Finally the only answer they have had of late is cutting head count. I feel that in the most recent round a death spiral has taken hold. One where the headcount reductions were so disruptive to the ongoing business that they themselves would lead to further decline and ultimately the next round of headcount cuts. The cycle will continue until the company is a shell of its former self.
Cisco hasn't invented its future yet and there's no one there to do it for them. They're coming out with silly products like a sparkboard that will eventually be a curiosity in a computer Museum. Their big Ideas used to be things like "voice over IP" which they would then proceed to dominate. There's open field for them to do the same. Cisco could create the single seamless secure end-to-end software-defined network of the future and completely eliminate the need for Hardware, dramatically reducing the costs to customers. They won't do that because they can't see the future and are too stuck in the past. A guy who spent his whole career selling networking gear is incapable of taking the steps that will make it obsolete. It's going to take that kind of courage and vision to build the Cisco of the future.