Networking giant Cisco had a bit of tough time in 2011, but it seems to have pushed through only to make a full recovery. The price paid was substantial, and over 10,000 workers have been laid off as a part of what has been referred to as a restructuring process, now almost complete, according to CEO John Chambers.

Investors had their expectations set high during the few hours before Cisco’s Q2 earnings call. Analysts were expecting earnings of 43 cents per share on revenue of $11.23 billion, compared to the 37 cents per share on $10.4 billion in sales it reported a year ago. A survey found that 27 analysts have a buy rating on the company, 16 have hold and only 3 recommend shareholders to sell off their stock. Investors took the pessimistic option. Joseph Hargett reported yesterday’s pre-call trading trends in a guest post on Forbes:

“Speaking of popularity, the most sought after CSCO weekly February call is the out-of-the-money 21 strike, where 23,335 contracts reside. By comparison, peak put open interest in the weekly February series lies at the out-of-the-money 19 strike, totaling 5,473 contracts. Remember, these options expire at the end of the week, and are thus likely based directly upon CSCO’s reaction to the company’s quarterly earnings report.”

Cisco didn’t disappoint. It reported profit of $2.2 billion or 47 cents a share on sales of $11.5 billion, beating Wall Street’s expectations.

Cisco’s caught the attention of investors, and also managed to work its charm on green activists too. The latest report by Greenpeace ranked the least polluting tech firms by assigning a score ranging from 0 to 100, and Cisco earned 49. In comparison Google, who was ranked no. 1, received 53 points out of 100.

Cisco has a strong outlook ahead, both in the very short term and in the long run. The chief of the company’s data center business discussed the latter in a blog post published yesterday, and made some interesting predictions about the cloud industry as a whole.