Why Microsoft Won't Abandon the Cloud Anytime Soon

[[Coi] Mr.CLuBBeR]

Microsoft's cloud revenue more than doubled yet again

If it appears that Microsoft has its head in the cloud these days, it's because it does, and that's where it will likely stay for a long time to come. There's little incentive for Microsoft to change course at this point, as its commercial cloud revenue just grew 106 percent to $2.76 billion during the company's third quarter of fiscal 2015. It's the seventh quarter in a row that its commercial cloud revenue has doubled up.
Microsoft's cloud growth helped the company collect $21.7 billion in revenue for its third quarter, beating out analysts' estimates. This led to Microsoft returning $7.5 billion to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends, the company announced.
"Customers continue to choose Microsoft to transform their business and as a result we saw incredible growth across our cloud services this quarter," said Satya Nadella, chief executive officer at Microsoft. "Next week at Build we're excited to share more about how we're empowering every individual and organization on the planet to achieve more with the next generation of our platforms."
The cloud has been kind to Microsoft, which saw a 35 percent sequential increase in Office 365 Consumer subscribers, bringing to the total number to more than 12.4 million. Combined with a doubling in commercial cloud revenue, it was easy for Microsoft to offset revenue declines in Windows OEM Pro (19 percent) and Windows OEM non-Pro (26 percent).
While it's still too early to tell, results like this could serve as more evidence that Microsoft will ultimately end up offering Windows as a service sometime down the line. As it stands, Windows 10 will be a free upgrade for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users, which could be a step in that direction.
Image Credit: Flickr (Robert Scoble)
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