The memo was long on strategy and vision and short on specifics. I have no doubt the specifics will make headlines very soon.  Chambers warned employees that Cisco will “take some bold steps” and “make tough decisions.” It’s hard to say what that means. Will he sell off or shutter certain businesses that aren’t performing? Will Cisco buy more companies to fix gaps in its product portfolio or replace disappointing products?

I’m not a Cisco customer. I’m just a journalist who talks to a lot of Cisco customers, analysts and Cisco employees. All I can offer are impressions I’ve received from those conversations. I will say this: Cisco is good at talking to CIOs, but it’s stumbled recently in how it talks to networking professionals. And networking professionals are Cisco’s core customers. Cisco has done a good job of presenting architecture to CIOs. Borderless Networks really appeals to CIOs, for instance. But routing and switching needs to be sold to network engineers and network architects. I don’t think that audience is liking the messages it is receiving right now. Usually those messages just lead to more questions.

Just the other day Cisco rolled out a huge slate of data center hardware and software products centered mostly on its Nexus switching line and its Unified Computing System servers. Lots of interesting boxes, like the Nexus 3000. Lots of interesting software and services upgrades, like multihop FCoE support. But overall, there was just too much in the presentation. Too many products at once.

I usually budget 30-45 minutes to talk to a vendor about a product rollout. And most vendors will present me with two or three major hardware or software elements in their news. The presentations are focused. With Cisco, there are 15, 20, 25 different elements. Some of them are completely unrelated to each other. Some products, like the ASA Services Module for the Catalyst 6500, get a single bullet point on a slide. Why can’t that product merit its own press release and briefing? I’d sit down to hear more about it.

When Chambers talks about discipline and focus, this is what I think about. I know that Cisco’s marketing and PR team, which features an army of extremely talented and passionate people, would love to give these smaller products more time – rather than slapping them onto the end of a larger announcement.

I can’t help but think that the same culture that is forcing little ace products to be lost in the shuffle with larger architectural announcements like data center transformation and Borderless Networks is also a problem in the product development and engineering side of the business. And that’s what has many long-time Cisco customers frustrated and worried. That’s why they keep picking on Cisco for buying companies like Pure Digital Technologies, the maker of the Flip camera. Cisco can hand those Flip cameras to VARs at its partner summit and tell them that it’s a good business tool. Maybe Cisco is right about that, but should Cisco really be making the Flip? Network engineers say no.

I’m excited to see what kinds of changes Cisco makes in the coming months. Despite all the doom and gloom, the company is still a leader in most of its markets. It’s still innovating. It still has loyal customers. This is about Cisco staying in that position, not about getting back into that position. To execute on that, Cisco needs to keep talking to the guys who push packets.

Given the angst over the FWSM, I was surprised to see how little fanfare Cisco gave the unveiling of its new ASA (Adaptive Security Appliance) Services Module for the Catalyst 6500. It merited a one sentence reference in Cisco’s press release and just a bullet point in the slide-deck I was shown this week as Cisco rolled out a huge slate of new data center technologies. Cisco gave more publicity to a new Application Control Engine (ACE) module for the 6500 that can do dynamic load balancing of VM workloads across data centers.

The ASA Services Module has 20 Gbps of maximum firewall throughput and it supports 300,000 connections per second, 10 million concurrent connections and 1,000 VLANs. You can install four of them in a single Catalyst 6500.

It’s nice to see these new service modules for the Catalyst 6500, but customers want to see comparable products for the Nexus 7000 products. Cisco hasn’t offered any guidance on what the future holds for bringing such functionality to its newer switch line. However, Cisco has developed a Virtual Security Gateway product which runs as software on the Nexus 1010 box, a command and control appliance for the Nexus 1000v virtual switch. Perhaps Cisco plans on doing all this stuff in software rather than hardware with Nexus.

“Ninety percent of our products are the best in the industry,” said Cisco CEO John Chambers during a press question-and-answer session last week, adding that this was the case across all technology segments from routing and switching to data center, video and collaboration.

Now it’s up to partners to avoid selling standalone products and instead show “how these products work together” and “how they will future proof the architecture,” Chambers said.

“If you’re a partner and you’re selling a commodity product that is not a good [strategy],” said Chambers.

Competitors that are asking partners to sell commodity products are “asking them to commoditize their businesses,” said Rob Lloyd, Cisco executive vice president of worldwide operations.

That said, journalists reminded Cisco execs of the company’s slipping share of the switching market (Cisco’s switching revenue has declined while Hewlett-Packard Networking’s has risen), executives agreed the message around the role of switching in an overall architectural play may need to be better communicated.

“We have more work to do both internally and with our partners to accentuate architectural differences,” said Lloyd. “John made the point that our portfolio has never been stronger … our 2960 switches and 3750s have never been better … we need to do a better job in emphasizing the role that Medianet plays and that TrustSec plays and that new applications will play.”

Cisco has introduced a major refresh of every part of its switching line in the past couple of years – and analysts have said the transition was poorly managed. Cisco execs admitted that the company introduced more product at once than it was prepared to handle on the marketing or business side.

“Rob and I never had the chance to add more than one switching product per year,” said Chambers. “When you suddenly transition everything from the 7000 to the 5000 all the way down to the Nexus line, and you look at what we’re doing with the 3000, and the ramp-up speed of how quickly they were accepted … When you bring out new product it always takes four or five years to catch up with margins … It’s just that we’ve never had so much innovation [at once].”

Chambers continued, “Make no mistake about this, we will control the market transition … We’re very well positioned from the data center all the way down.”