In the restructuring, Cisco assigned specific people to address those shortcomings, Chambers said. It also moved from a controversial collection of boards and councils managing the company to named individuals being responsible for product lines.

Executives laid out some details about how Cisco intends to streamline its business. By giving sales people more autonomy to make deals, the company cut the average time spent reviewing deals by 70 percent, chief operating officer Gary Moore said. Cisco also made a large number of product teams work more closely together instead of competing, according to Chambers.

Cisco plans to further integrate its technologies and leverage components for more products, Chambers said. Also, the company plans to use the same ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) across multiple product lines to save chip development costs.

Cisco's five areas of focus now are its core routing and switching business, collaboration, data-center virtualization, video, and tying these elements together in an overall architecture.

Executives said the leaner Cisco has a strong outlook for the next three years, forecasting average annual revenue growth between 5 percent and 7 percent. Earnings per share, not counting certain one-time items, should grow by between 7 percent and 9 percent per year, chief financial officer Frank Calderone said.