Cisco beat expectations for revenue and profit in its first earnings report under new CEO Chuck Robbins, touting growth in its switching and routing business as the company battles for market share against emerging network technology competitors.

Revenues for Cisco's fourth quarter, which ended July 25, hit $12.8 billion, for net income of $2.3 billion, or 59 cents per share excluding some items. Analysts had expected revenue of $12.65 billion and net income of 56 cents per share, according to Reuters.

In announcing the results on Wednesday, executives highlighted growth in Cisco switch and router sales, up 2 and 3 percent respectively over the same quarter last year. Those may sound like slim increases, but they come as partial rebuttal to critics who expect changing approaches to networking to undermine the titan's market share.

Robbins, who officially took over as CEO on July 27, also stressed progress in security, a market the company has targeted for takeover. Cisco last month acquired hybrid cloud security firm OpenDNS to bolster those efforts.

Interestingly, security is where Cisco is hyping the "shift to software," with Robbins pointing out on a conference call Wednesday that software made up 47 percent of the company's security sales for the quarter, which were up 4 percent.

For the duration of the conference call with investors, Cisco executives did not mention software-defined networking, with Robbins at one point mentioning "NFV and ..." before pausing to continue on another track.

"In the past 90 days we've seen an infectious energy emerging at Cisco," said Robbins. "I really do believe the best years for Cisco are ahead."