Microsoft’s Cloud Revenue Up 31 Pct YOY

Microsoft came off the quarter ending Sept. 30 with $37.2 billion in revenue, a 12 percent increase over last year at the same time, with a major reason for its success this year being cloud services, according to a press release.

“Demand for our cloud offerings drove a strong start to the fiscal year with our commercial cloud revenue generating $15.2 billion, up 31 percent year over year,” said Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft, in the release. “We continue to invest against the significant opportunity ahead of us to drive long-term growth.”

Intelligent cloud revenue was $13 billion, an increase of 20 percent from the previous year, the release noted.

In addition, server products and cloud services revenue were up 22 percent, with 48 percent in Azure revenue growth driving the change, according to the release. Azure is Microsoft’s cloud-computing system.

According to Satya Nadella, the company’s CEO, Microsoft doesn’t plan to stop innovating in the coming years.

“The next decade of economic performance for every business will be defined by the speed of their digital transformation,” he said, according to the release. “We are innovating across our full modern tech stack to help our customers in every industry improve time to value, increase agility and reduce costs.”

Microsoft’s work in the cloud field includes a partnership with Mastercard, in which the two worked on boosting Mastercard Labs, the research and development arm of the financial services giant. Mastercard Labs is working on strengthening cloud services and helping partners tap into new digital payments through devices.

According to a PYMNTS report, the idea is to help integrate Azure with Mastercard and make digital payments more accessible globally.

The company’s net income was $13.9 billion, an increase of 30 percent, the release stated. Diluted earnings per share were $1.82, an increase of 32 percent. Revenue in productivity and business processes increased 11 percent to $12.3 billion, while revenue in “more personal computing” increased 6 percent to $11.8 billion.