Scott Herren
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Cisco Systems
Thanks, Chuck. I'll start with a summary of our financial results for the quarter, then cover the full fiscal year, followed by our guidance. As Chuck said, we delivered another record quarter driven by focused execution, continued business transformation and the actions we took during the year to mitigate supply issues. We reported our strongest ever revenue, non-GAAP operating margin, earnings per share and operating cash flow in Q4.
Total revenue was $15.2 billion, up 16% year-on year at the high-end of our guidance range. Non-GAAP net income was $4.7 billion, up 36%, non-GAAP EPS was $1.14, up 37%, exceeding the high end of our guidance range.
Looking at our Q4 revenue in more detail, total product revenue was $11.7 billion, up 20%. Service revenue was $3.6 billion, up 4%. Within product revenue, Secure Agile Networks, our largest product category was very strong, up 33%. Switching revenue had double-digit growth with strength in both campus and data center switching, driven by our Catalyst 9000, Nexus 9000 and Meraki offerings. Enterprise routing declined, driven primarily by access, partially offset by strength in our Catalyst 8000 Series SD-WAN and IoT routing. Wireless had double-digit growth, driven by our Wi-Fi 6 products and Meraki wireless offerings.
Internet for the future was up 3% driven by growth in our core routing products, including strong growth in our Cisco 8000 offering. We also saw a double-digit growth in webscale. Collaboration was down 12% driven by declines in collaboration devices and meetings, partially offset by growth in cloud calling and cloud contact center. End-to-end security was flat with growth in our zero trust offerings, offset by a decline in our network security offerings. And optimized application experiences was up 15% driven by growth across the portfolio, including double-digit growth in 10000 and AppDynamics.
We continue to make progress on the transformation of our business to more recurring revenue-based offerings, driven by higher levels of software and subscriptions. We saw solid performance in our ARR of $24.3 billion, which increased 5% with product ARR growth of 10%. Total software revenue accelerated to $4.6 billion, an increase of 17% with software subscription revenue up 20%. 85% of our software revenue was subscription-based.
Total subscription revenue was $6.6 billion, an increase of 13%. And RPO was $34.9 billion, up double-digits at 11%. Both product and service RPO had strong growth, with product RPO of 12% and service RPO of 9%. Total short-term RPO grew to $17.9 billion. Total product orders were down 14% year-on year, but grew sequentially by more than 30%. This was against a strong performance in the year-ago quarter, where we delivered the second highest orders in absolute dollars in the history of the company.
The aging of our backlog has continued to improve as the supply situation normalizes and as expected, increased customer deliveries reduced our year end backlog to roughly double historical levels as we enter fiscal '24. Order cancellation rates remain below pre-pandemic levels, which reflects the true demand and criticality of our technologies to our customers.
Total non-GAAP gross margin came in at 65.9%, exceeding the high-end of our guidance range and up 260 basis-points. Product gross margin was 65.5%, up 420 basis points. The increase was primarily driven by positive pricing and product mix as we realize the benefits from the actions we took in the prior fiscal year. We also drove productivity improvements with lower freight and logistics, component and other costs.
Services gross margin was 67.5%, down 150 basis points year-over-year. Non-GAAP operating margin came in at 35.4%, exceeding the high end of our guidance range and up 300 basis points. This improved leverage was driven by both our strong non-GAAP gross margin and ongoing cost management.
Shifting to the balance sheet, we ended Q4 with total cash, cash equivalents and investments of $26.1 billion. We had record operating cash flow for the quarter of $6 billion, up 62%, driven primarily by strong top line performance and the deferral of our Q4 federal tax payment. Consistent with our prior commentary, the IRS tax relief, related to the California floods postponed our current year federal income tax payment until Q1 of our fiscal '24. Consequently, in Q1 of fiscal '24, our federal income tax-related cash outflows will include an incremental $2.8 billion of payments for these prior quarters.
This quarter we returned $2.8 billion to shareholders, comprised of $1.6 billion for our quarterly cash dividend and $1.3 billion of share repurchases. Consistent with our capital allocation strategy that we outlined last quarter, we are committed to increasing shareholder returns through a greater operating leverage, while increasing our annual share repurchases and growing our dividend.
Turning to the full-fiscal year, we delivered record results in revenue, net income, earnings per share and operating cash-flow. Revenue for the year was $57 billion, up 11% and non-GAAP earnings per share was $3.89, up 16%, demonstrating again the operating leverage that we've been driving.
In terms of our software metrics, total software revenue for the full-year was up 12% at $17 billion with the product portion up 14%. 84% of software revenue was subscription-based, which is up 2 percentage points. Total subscription revenue was $24.6 billion, an increase of 10%. Total non-GAAP gross margin was 64.5%, down 10 basis points. On the bottom-line, non-GAAP net income was $16 billion, up 13%. We delivered record operating cash flow of $19.9 billion, up 50% compared to fiscal '22, driven primarily by strong results, linearity, collections and the federal tax deferral as noted previously.
We returned $10.6 billion in value to our shareholders via cash dividends and stock repurchases. So, comprised of $6.3 billion in quarterly cash dividends and $4.3 billion of share repurchases. We increased our dividend for the 12th consecutive year in fiscal 2023, reinforcing our confidence in the strength and stability of our ongoing cash flows. We continue to invest organically and inorganically in our innovation pipeline during Q4. We closed the acquisitions of Lightspin Technologies, Smartlook and Armorblox. These investments are consistent with our strategy of complementing our internal innovation with R&D -- and R&D with targeted strategic M&A.
To summarize, we had a very strong quarter and fiscal year with record results. We executed well, delivering double-digit top-line growth, profitability and cash flow. We continue to make progress on our business model shift to more recurring revenue, while making strategic investments in innovation to capitalize on our significant growth opportunities.
Turning now to our guidance. For fiscal Q1, our guidance is, we expect revenue to be in the range of $14.5 billion to $14.7 billion. We anticipate the non-GAAP gross margin to be in the range of 65% to 66%. Our non-GAAP operating margin is expected to be in the range of 34% to 35%. And non-GAAP earnings per share is expected to range from $1.2 to $1.4. For fiscal year '24, our guidance is as follows: we expect revenue to be in the range of $57 million to $58.2 billion, non-GAAP earnings per share is expected to range from $4.1 to $4.8. In both our Q1 and full-year guidance, we're assuming a non-GAAP effective tax-rate of 19%.
I'll now turn it back to Marilyn, so we can move into the Q&A.
