TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says Cisco's earnings are supposed to be spectacular. If they're not, you can expect a quick sell-off.

I do not envy John Chambers. He's given out tons of interviews in the past few weeks on all sorts of big-think business topics. He has seen his stock go from being liked to almost universally loved by the analyst community. Numbers have been raised, target prices bumped, recommendations turned even more bullish than in past quarters.

And tonight when Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) (Cramer's Take) reports, Chambers has to live up to that billing.

Is he being set up to fail? I like Cisco very much, and have ever since it became clear to me that the Mobile Internet Tsunami is going to be the biggest trend since the Net itself and the personal computer beforehand. Cisco's got its tentacles in every single part of the enterprise.

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) reported Q3 stats after the bell on Wednesday. How did the tech company that runs with the likes of Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), Juniper Networks (NASDAQ: JNPR), and Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) fare? Very well, thank you.

Well, let me clarify that. Cisco saw a lot of declines in its numbers, but we all know what the most important thing to investors is: beating the Wall Street analysts. In this regard, Cisco's management did just fine. As I observed in my earnings preview piece, the call was for Cisco to do somewhere around 25 cents per share. Well, the company bested that figure by an awesome nickel on an adjusted basis.

Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) qualifies as one of the largest tech bellwether stocks in the world. When it does good quarter to quarter, the entire market reacts. Sometimes, the reaction seems more like confusion over plain English spoken by company CEO John Chambers. Not this time, though.

When Chambers told attendees of a Morgan Stanley conference this week that he was comfortable with Cisco's existing guidance this year (and forward), many tech stocks headed up on his words alone.

Not only did Cisco's shares regain losses from earlier in the day yesterday, but the the Morgan Stanley Technology Index closed at 528.03, up from an earlier 517.30. IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) and Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) also saw advances as the trading day closed on Tuesday. Cisco reiterated its long-term growth prospects of 12% to 17%, plus fiscal Q3 revenue growth of 10% (plus or minus 1%) -- and those kind of figures apparently just weren't good enough for some traders who generally expect the impossible in many cases.

Chambers said that Cisco will navigate through "bumps" in the U.S. economy that may last two or three more quarters, but will also remain aggressive in acquisitions. Additionally, the world's largest computer networking company will continue to add jobs, with Chambers adding "we plan to be aggressive during the slowdown ... it's a chance to gain market share." No misinterpreting his words there.

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) believes so strongly in its plans to continue to sell routers and video technology that it would not change its strategy, even in a recession. The company plans to take the long view and believes that sticking to its programs will produce the best results over the next five years.

It is nice to know that someone in corporate America thinks enough of their business not to change it every quarter. "I don't make any decisions on the next quarter or the next year. I make my decisions three to five years out so I do not adjust my strategy based on what spending's going to be next quarter or three quarters. I make my decisions on three to five years," John Chambers, the company's CEO told Reuters.

Cisco's success will thus rise and fall on the growth of broadband and video use by companies and consumers. It is not an entirely safe bet. Cable companies are seeing some moderation in growth rates. It is not clear the dozens of new video technologies will catch on.

Web traffic is likely to keep growing, which will help Cisco's core router business, but it would not be surprising if a global economic slowdown hit communications capital spending hard. Then the question is whether Cisco is willing to face some very hard quarters or will it cut costs like most companies do

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

When Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) CEO John Chambers said this year that he was not planning on retiring from the top spot at the company he's led for quite a while, prospective mental exit flags started popping up. You see, there are some executives that wait a career or more to ascend to the CEO spot but get sidetracked when a CEO like Oracle's (NASDCAQ: ORCL) Larry Ellison or Cisco's John Chambers settle in for a decade or more of sitting in the corner office.

Such is life, but it's caused two high-profile C-level defections from Cisco this year -- the latest having been announced yesterday. Charles Giancarlo, a 14-year veteran of the company and the Chief Development Officer, announced his resignation from the company at the same time he announced that he is joining private capital firm Silver Lake Partners.

Giancarlo, who is 50, indicated that he was "fully aware of his biological clock" in announcing the decision to leave, which seems to be very amicable between himself and Cisco. Chambers, considered to be one of the best CEOs on the planet, is simply not going to leave any time soon -- and his lieutenants can't wait around forever waiting for the top spot, naturally.

Giancarlo will be missed at Cisco, no doubt -- but he won't be replaced. Cisco will turn his duties over to a new strategy group. In the call between the two men, words like "I love ya" and "You can still reconsider" were used, which is extremely rare when an executive leaves any public company. Maybe that's the testament to the culture Chambers has instilled at Cisco, which remains ranked as one of the best places in America to work.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says a comment by the Cisco CEO about systems spending caused more damage than it should have.

Everyone thinks we lost tech. That's because everyone was hiding in tech. They thought it was "safe."

Perhaps we confused tech with Coke (NYSE: KO) (Cramer's Take) and Pepsi (NYSE: PEP) (Cramer's Take).

First, the root cause of all of this is the somewhat off-handed comment about how the financial services industry has cut back on spending for systems.

We never want to hear any company say anything about spending cuts by customers. It is intriguing that the only place where spending was hit was by these customers. It was enough to kill all tech, though.

Is it right? If tech hadn't been so hyped and if tech wasn't so linked to financial services, I don't know how much we would be down.

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) comes in and reports a very, very nice quarter. Superb year-over-year growth in earnings and revenues. For a company approaching $40 billion of revenues, any kind of growth higher than 10% is just awesome. Cisco is forecasting growth better than 15% going forward. Yet, this technology leader has been the catalyst for today's massive sell-off, primarily in NASDAQ stocks. So, what happened?

Cisco CEO John Chambers, also known as the cheerleader-in-charge, said on the earnings conference call that financial institutions were slowing down with their respective IT spending. Cisco is big enough and diverse enough not to let that fact upset its future outlook. Cisco is not dependent on any one geography or sector to make or break its numbers. The message however, was daunting to the other technology names.

For the first time this year, we are witnessing the sell-off of the real winners of the year. The revenue and earnings growth for Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM), Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), and Intutive Surgical (NASDAQ: ISRG) have been beyond any analysts' expectations. But even the secondary performers like Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL), Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), Cisco itself, and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) are also coming down today. Technology has been the safe place to hide this year, as these giants sell globally and were the benefactors of a weak dollar and global growth.

Technology powerhouse Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) announced the acquisition of private company Cognio. The financial terms were not disclosed as is Cisco's nature to when acquiring private companies. Obviously, it must reveal purchase price and terms if it acquires a public company, as it recently had with WebEx. Cisco paid over $3 billion for WebEx. Cognio adds to Cisco's portfolio in the wireless technology sector.

Cisco Systems is the expert in integrating acquisitions into its ever-growing tent. To date, it has acquired over 130 companies since 1993. Cisco has re-defined the world of research and development (R&D), as while it has been the master of development, it hasn't bothered too much with the research side of the tandem. Cisco's strength lies in integrating a newly acquired entity very quickly and very seamlessly into its own operations. From where every one sits in the headquarter building to the finite points of its 401k plan, Cisco has an internal team that jumps into action the moment its CEO blesses and signs on the bottom line.

Cisco has made some brilliant acquisitions in the past such as Scientific Atlanta and WebEx, as well as some duds. The beauty of Cisco's strategy is to recognize mistakes quickly, correct them and march on. Nurturing a bad acquisition is not in its make up. Cisco will eliminate non-cooperating staff with lightning speed while retaining the valuable technology of the acquired.

Cisco Systems Inc (NASDAQ: CSCO), the networking gear giant, hit the ball out of the park once again last night. Total revenue was $9.4 billion, up 18% -- exceeding a forecast of 15% to 16% growth. Order growth was even stronger at 19% to 20% and GAAP EPS was up 25%.

What continues to be amazing is Cisco's cash generation, which was $2.4 billion for the quarter. For the fiscal year, Cisco generated over $10 billion in cash, used $7 billion for share repurchase, made acquisitions and ended the quarter with $22.3 billion of the green stuff on its balance sheet. Gross margins also ticked up in the quarter, exceeding 65%.

John Chambers', Cisco CEO, confidence continues to grow, particularly with increasing success in the service provider business, as the evolution away from circuit-switched networks to IP networks continues. Service provider growth hit 20% in the quarter. Investors would be hard pressed to find such growth in the old telecom equipment companies.

Scientific Atlanta, the cable set-top box company Cisco recently acquired, grew 30% which was very strong growth. However, orders were up just 12%.

Often the most important statistic in terms of measuring success in tech land is employee growth. Cisco hired 1,800 direct employees for engineering and marketing jobs in the quarter, not due to acquisitions. This is a very bullish sign.

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) reported its fiscal fourth quarter earnings excluding one-time items of 36 cents today following the close, one cent better than the 35 cents analysts had expected.

So far in after hours trading the stock has remained flat. Before today's earnings annoucment, Cisco rose 19 cents to $26.69, up 0.6%.

At 4:30 PM EDT the company is going to be hosting its quarterly conference call, and we will be liveblogging the call in its entirety. Be sure to check back for up- to-the-minute coverage on today's call, where we will get a little more insight into this most recent quarter.

Michael Fowlkes has worked as a stock trader for seven years and spent the last two years working as an analyst for the online investment advisory service Investor's Observer.

In a presentation at the ITU Telecom World Conference, Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) CEO John Chambers, talked about his vision of the future. As should be no surprise, expect huge amounts of Internet traffic (this is according to a piece from CNET's News.com).

How much? Well, by 2015, he thinks monthly rates will be 15 exabytes: or, to translate, at 15 billion gigabytes.

And we can blame YouTube for this. After all, to play video on the web requires a lot of bandwidth. Furthermore, with the acquisition from Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), many companies will think online video is no fad and will begin to push aggressively into this category.

According to Chambers, the possibilities are seemingly endless. One example: tele-medicine. Hey, isn't healthcare a multi-trillion dollar business? But, of course, it's all good news for Cisco, which has the necessary infrastructure to make this happen.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and operates DealProfiles.com.