Microsoft Azure, the software giant cloud business, is growing fast with no sign of slowing down. The company's cloud computing business has almost doubled its size in the past year.
Launched in 2010, Azure is a cloud computing service providing enterprise customer scale and efficiency for secure server infrastructure and cloud applications. And the cloud business is driving result for Microsoft.
The cloud business provides SaaS, IaaS and PaaS and also supports for many different development frameworks, including third-party platform and systems.
Azure Is Growing Fast, Double In Size
According to TheStreet, Azure is growing fast and its cloud business saw revenue of $6.9 billion, beating Wall Street's predictions for $6.72 billion. The company has managed to establish a strong footing in the hotly contested hybrid cloud computing space, as customers remain confident in Microsoft's technical expertise in cloud computing services.
With 93 percent year-over-year growth in revenue, Azure played an important key role in the growth in the company's cloud business, which delivered $6.9 billion in revenue during the second quarter only.
Overall, the software giant has posted earnings of $0.76 per share on adjusted revenues of $22.33 billion, thus beating Wall Street expectations for the December quarter, according to Recode.net.
Microsoft Might Close The Gap With AWS
Despite the Microsoft's well-established position in the cloud computing space, it still trails Amazon Web Services in terms of market share.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is currently three times the size of Azure, has proved to be a dominating force in the fast-growing cloud computing business.
But despite being the underdog and the smaller player in the more intense Microsoft Azure-AWS cloud computing battle, analysts still believe that Microsoft will have the upper hand in this kind of battle.
Analysts also said that Microsoft might become a bigger cloud player than Amazon in the long term because, in addition to the massive Azure infrastructure services, the software giant also has an actively growing SaaS (software-as-a-services) portfolio as well as a strong enterprise grip that AWS will never be able to match.
SaaS is one big area that Microsoft has managed to take a strong grip, and AWS has not. It is the one piece of area in the vast computing business that AWS might be playing catch up with Microsoft.
However, when it comes to IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-services) market, Amazon still has this overwhelming superiority (based on the company's track record and market share) and will continue to dominate that space for a long time.
