Cisco this week posted fourth quarter 2008 results a bit better than Wall Street expectations.

Cisco recorded fourth quarter net sales of $10.4 billion, beating Wall Street estimates by $100 million and growing 10% from the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007. Net income, excluding expenses, charges and other items, was $2.4 billion, or 40 cents per share, a penny better than analyst estimates and an increase of 11%.

Q4 was the first $10 billion quarter in Cisco’s history.

"Cisco delivered solid quarterly and annual results," said John Chambers, Cisco chairman and CEO, in a statement. "Today's strong results demonstrate the company's ability to execute.”

Orders for routers were up 14%, switching up 7% and advanced technologies up 21%, with unified communications orders up 51% and application networking services increasing 36%. Orders for emerging technologies – which include Cisco’s TelePresence, digital media and physical security systems – grew 300% in the quarter.

In terms of product revenue, routers were up 8%, switches up 5% and advanced technologies increased 15%.

Order growth in the enterprise/public sector segment of Cisco’s business was up 10% and up 5% in service provider. The commercial segment saw 17% order growth.

For the full fiscal 2008 year, Cisco posted revenue of $39.5 billion, an increase of 13%. Earnings, excluding expenses, were up 14.4% from FY 2007 and 16.4% on a per share basis.

Chambers, however, reiterated the caution he expressed earlier in the quarter on the macroeconomic environment and its effect on IT spending. He says these challenges will remain over the “next few quarters.”

With that, Cisco guided to a Q1 ’09 revenue boost of 8% and a Q2 hike of 8.5%, even lower than the tempered guidance the company provided for Q4 ‘08. Chambers declined to provide guidance for the full fiscal year of 2009 until Cisco is more comfortable with the predictability of the spending and overall economic environment.

“The market is clearly in transition, and we will use this time as an opportunity to expand our share of customer spend and to aggressively move into market adjacencies," he said in a statement on the quarterly results.

Nonetheless, Chambers said Cisco’s confidence in long term growth in the 12% to 17% range remains “very strong” and that the company has detected some improvement in the U.S. enterprise market.