IOS XE was a very fulfilling project and aligns well with Chuck's recent announcement about how spin-ins may be back on the menu (since XE was out of the BCN spin-in). It would be nice, however, to Cisco extend this kind of innovation to other parts of the business.

UCS has gotten not much love lately; what's interesting about it Security is abandoned. Cloud.. ? Not happening.

The problem as I see it is that Cisco has these enormous cash cows that even without serious investment deliver huge revenues year after year after year. The risk to a business like Cisco is that an inflection point comes along and turns it all on its head.

Unlike others I appreciate that Cisco is not yet in that position; there are storm clouds on the distant horizon (things like cloud are likely to change the business for Cisco but not nearly as soon as people think) however.

The real question people should be asking is why so many Cisco acquisitions go nowhere. Meraki was a great model for next generation CPE but isn't really happening. Cisco has spent a ton of money on "cloud" stuff that doesn't seem to be going anywhere (cliqr, metacloud, jasper, piston, parstream), ditto security (embrane, tailf, ...)OpenDNS is a great acquisition but how are you taking it forward? Cariden was best in the business but where is the synergy? etc.

In other words, it sure seems like the innovative core ran out of juice in the 200xs and now the reactor is just going cold.

Innovation at Cisco has a long, long history of BUY(Aironet, Crescendo, S1, Cerent, Growth, etc.!)-or-SPININ(nuova, bcn, insieme, ...). Those are great. But lately the buy list looks pretty grim; it's like a bunch of stuff that's on clearance and which are "safe" (boring) buys.