Cisco has been a very active company lately, most notably these past 12 hours. Several updates were announced and uncovered, starting with a new no. 2 executive, as revealed by WSJ. While other companies are eliminating the chief operating officer title, Cisco just added to it – Gary Moore has been named the company’s new coo. Moore has been with Cisco for the last 10 years, most recently serving as executive VP of the services business, and is now responsible for operational organization.

CEO John Chambers may need a right hand, but Moore is definitely not his successor; given investor concerns have been raised regarding this matter.  More than a title change, Moore has a great deal he’s taking upon his shoulders, and it seems his position is a welcoming bit of encouragement for Cisco’s 2011 outlook.  “Any type of management change would be welcome,” said Channing Smith, managing director of mutual fund Capital Advisors, who owns a stake in Cisco. “But I suspect changing personnel isn’t going to solve Cisco’s problems.”

Cisco’s problems express themselves in weakening revenue and earnings, causing Cisco to shift gears a bit. This is attributed to a drop in Cisco’s core switch business, which corresponds with a recent milestone.  PCWorld reports the networking giant generated more revenues from its new products and services than it did from switches and routers, which fits in fairly well considering Cisco’s ventures into new segments.

“That’s the logic that has gotten this router vendor neck-deep into selling everything from set-top boxes to blade servers to video cameras. In fact, the company has its hands in about 30 “market adjacencies” right now.”

Among the new segments are servers and digital signage, two areas in which Cisco also reached significant landmarks as well.  The figures were only released a few hours ago: GigaOm reports the company’s server customer number reached 400 in Dec. 31 last year, and Digital Signage Today highlightes 3,000 customer deployments the company has gained. Moreover, Cisco is now officially ranked the global market-share leader in digital signage software.

Cisco’s Unified Computing System server business became available in the summer of 2009, a development that parallels a fresh enterprise social network venture arriving in the form of a €500,000 deal with DERI.  Cisco may just be on the right track.  Even if it’s shifting away from what was once its core business, the company is seeing rapid growth in other areas, an indicator of a good investment.