Microsoft announced that their now-flagship cloud services have doubled in sales in its Q1 hiking earnings higher than expected by analyst predictions for the corporation. Even better news is that this sent its share prices to a record high, even breaking the one set in 1999 during the booming times of the tech stock bubble.
Furthermore, Satya Nadella has had a positive effect on the tech giant. Stock price has doubled since Nadella took over in August 2013 and steered the tech giant away from PCs to products and services in mobile and cloud computing.
Traditionally known for its Windows suites, Microsoft has begun to focus on other areas of software development specifically in cloud computing where Microsoft Azure is competing with Amazon Web Services. The earnings registered thanks to cloud products spell a turnaround in the tides of Microsoft’s fortunes as well as the changing needs of businesses and commercial activities increasingly more reliant on cloud servers and related services.
Reuters reports that Microsoft shares increased by 6.2 per cent to 60.79 dollars after trading had closed. Gains dipped minutely but still, the overall gains registered were still an impressive 25 billion dollars to market value.
Azure, their staple cloud platform for hosting data, showed sales up by 116%. Overall intelligent cloud segment brought in 6.38 billion dollars in revenue, an 8.3 per cent increase and surpassed analyst estimate of 6.27 billion dollars.
Reuters quotes Nadella as saying, "We are not just building or moving (clients') IT… Customers "are building new digital services for hyper scale. And that's what is probably unique in terms of what has changed year over year for us.”
"It's not just the Silicon Valley startups anymore; it is the core enterprise that is also becoming a digital company. And we are well-positioned to serve them".
After adjustments, Reuters further says Microsoft shows revenue value of 22.33 billion dollars, beating average estimate 21.71 billion dollars for same.
BW Reporters
Regina is a reporter for BW Businessworld. In her previous assignments, she has worked with Independent television Network as a news anchor and reporter in Sri Lanka