Microsoft cloud revenues double as Azure sees more adoption

In reporting financials from its second fiscal quarter, Microsoft got a big boost from its cloud computing business as its Azure platform and service revenue grew 140% year-over-year.
“Businesses everywhere are using the Microsoft Cloud as their digital platform to drive their ambitious transformation agendas,” said Satya Nadella, chief executive officer at Microsoft. “Businesses are also piloting Windows 10, which will drive deployments beyond 200 million active devices.”
Revenue from “intelligent cloud” totaled $6.3 billion with 10% revenue growth from server products and cloud services; the strong growth in Azure revenue; and enterprise mobility solution adoption from “over one-third of the Fortune 500.”
For example, AT&T and Microsoft recent announced a partnership around internet of things development. AT&T is joining its IoT platform with Azure
AT&T says the integration of the two technologies offers several benefits for developers including a secure cloud environment; easy data management; and increased time-to-market.
“We want to fuel innovation in the IoT industry,” Chris Penrose, SVP, AT&T IoT Solutions, said. “Using Azure, we’ve created a one-stop shop for developers to turn ideas into solutions. They now have platforms, connectivity and cloud services in one package to launch products and support their developer ecosystem.”
After Microsoft reported its latest earnings, stock price saw a 4% surge.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Stifel Nicolaus & Co. analyst Brad Reback said Microsoft is “effectively getting their customers to transition to the cloud.”
The cloud-based computing market is attracting enterprise customers faced with the ever-increasing need to cut costs and boost revenues through digitalization strategies focused on using data analytics functions to gain efficiency and insight relative to business operations.
But, deploying a cloud infrastructure, in addition to being a highly complex, difficult process, also costs a lot of money. That’s why many cloud players are launching cloud-as-a-service models like Azure to reach new enterprise clients. Like with the whole as-a-service movement, the idea is to outsource the infrastructure investment and maintenance to the experts, while still getting all the benefits.