Microsoft reported revenues of $30 billion in the second quarter of this year, 17.5 percent higher than in the same period last year, while profit surged nearly 10 percent, from $8.07 billion to $8.87 billion, primarily due to its cloud business.
The strong growth in financial results is mainly attributed to the continuation of positive trends in Microsoft’s cloud business, which includes the Azure platform, as more companies choose to reduce their data storage costs by adopting cloud-based software and migrating their applications to data centers.
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Microsoft’s cloud business revenue grew by 23 percent year-over-year to $9.6 billion. Meanwhile, revenue from Azure alone skyrocketed by 89 percent, despite significant competition in this area from companies such as market leader Amazon.com, followed by Alphabet’s Google, IBM, and Oracle.
The growth of Azure has positioned Microsoft in second place with a 16 percent share of the cloud computing market, just behind Amazon, which holds about 30 percent of that market, as recently reported by the analytics firm Canalys.
Under the leadership of CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has been shifting from traditional software business, which grows more slowly, to cloud services and mobile applications for some time now.
