Speaking of commercial cloud, Microsoft’s key cloud business, Azure, had another awesome quarter with 93 percent revenue growth YOY.
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Intelligent Cloud contains the Azure public cloud, which competes with Amazon Web Services and represents Microsoft’s biggest growth driver overall. Net income rose to $7.42 billion, or 95 cents per share, from $5.49 billion or 70 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter. Analysts surveyed in advance by Yahoo Finance expected earnings of 85 cents per share on $25.77 million in revenue. Diluted earnings per share comes out to $0.95, a 36% (31% CC) increase from the same quarter previous year.
Microsoft stock MSFT, +1.21% rose more than 3% in the extended session after closing up 2.1% to $94.26 during regular trading. Microsoft said Surface revenue grew 32 percent, the only caveat being that the prior year was impacted by “product end-of-life-cycle dynamics”.
Operating income was $8.3 billion and increased 23%. I believe between them we have the best platform for what is going to be hybrid computing and we’ll continue to push on that, so you’ll see growth.
However, its growth was nearly flat when compared to last quarter.
Of course, challenges remain, cyber-attacks and security issues continue to be a major concern for the cloud business, but a vision of Microsoft’s post-Windows future is clearer than ever. Microsoft’s Office commercial products revenue increased by 14 percent as a result. On the consumer side, things are bit softer-hey, this is Microsoft-but the Office 365 consumer base hit 30.6 million active users and revenues are up 12 percent YOY.
Judson Althoff, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Worldwide Commercial Business organisation, said the company’s growth can be attributed to its customers’ digital innovation.
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Amazon’s cloud business has surpassed analyst estimates, with revenue climbing 49 percent in the first quarter. This segment is most visible and important to PC / Tech enthusiasts as it includes Windows, Surface devices, and gaming – as well as consumer cloud services and search advertising revenue.
