Microsoft’s transformation into a cloud computing company continued apace in during its first fiscal quarter, which saw a 47 percent jump in revenue from its commercial cloud products but also saw a dip in the growth of its Azure public cloud computing service. For the period ended Sept. 30th…
A look inside a Microsoft data center in Cheyenne, Wyo. (Microsoft Photo)
Microsoft’s transformation into a cloud computing company continued apace in during its first fiscal quarter, which saw a 47 percent jump in revenue from its commercial cloud products but also saw a dip in the growth of its Azure public cloud computing service.
For the period ended Sept. 30th, Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud Division — which includes sales of products like Windows Server, Azure, and enterprise services — grew 24 percent to $8.6 billion. Commercial cloud revenue, a slightly different key metric for Microsoft over the past few years that also includes the commercial version of Office 365, Dynamics 365 and commercial LinkedIn services, increased 47 percent to $8.5 billion.
Microsoft continued to keep Azure’s revenue a secret, and reported growth of 76 percent in revenue for its public cloud infrastructure service during the quarter. That’s heady growth, for sure, but it’s down from previous quarters in which Azure revenue growth ranged between 89 and 99 percent.
Still, Microsoft also said that Azure’s gross margin improved during the quarter, lifting the gross margin of the entire commercial cloud business 4 percentage points to 62 percent.
