It appears to be back to business as usual for Cisco, which reported a 27 percent bump in second quarter earnings from a year ago, topped analyst's expectations and increased its quarterly dividend from 2 cents to 8 cents a share. The quarter included record revenue and comes on the heels of two previous quarters where Cisco outdid Wall Street's forecasts.

The networking giant's EPS were 47 cents, up from 37 cents per share a year ago, on net income of $2.2 billion from $1.5 billion last year, handily beating analysts' expectations of 43 cents per share. Revenue was up 10 percent to $11.5 billion (Wall Street had looked for $11.23 billion), from $10.41 billion in the year-ago quarter.

Chief executive John Chambers said the earnings reflected strength across the breadth of Cisco's offerings, saying the performance "goes way beyond routing and switching."

"Our vision and strategy are working very well... It's a continuous journey and we're making good progress on it," Chambers said during an investor call. "Record revenues, earnings, growing profits faster than sales. I don't think it could have been a much better quarter in terms of the trends."

Chambers, who three quarters ago embarked on a $1 billion cost-cutting campaign, closing or selling under-performing businesses, trimming staff by 10,000 and vowing to contain expenses, said the company had "done exactly as we said in our five year plan," and got to the $1 billion expense reduction target a quarter ahead of schedule.

The company has even begun to add back some of its workforce, adding 400 jobs in the quarter to bring its headcount to 63,800, still significantly short of its peak in 2011 of 73,408.

Chambers also indicated that Cisco, which has acquired some 150 companies in its history and currently has some $5 billion in cash on hand, would again be looking at increasing its M&A activity after curtailing it while the company restructured.

"We've used acquisitions as a part of our strategy for most of our history. We've been at this longer than most in the industry, and we believe we are very good at it," he said. "...We expect to be more active with acquisitions in the quarters and years to come, selectively adding to our portfolio... As we have in the past, we continue to be disciplined and thoughtful in regards to price, value and strategic fit to meet our approach to M&A.".fierceenterprisecommunications.com