Microsoft Azure is making another impressive performance in the cloud computing market. Based on the company's most recent financial reports, the cloud business has been a good one for the software company in the past few months. Azure has turned more positive in recent months as it becomes a credible challenger and viable alternative to the 600-pounds Apex predator of the cloud computing market- the Amazon AWS.

Microsoft Beefs Up Its Cloud Portfolio To Boost Its Cloud Competitive Stakes

Microsoft has been aggressively beefing up and expanding its Azure cloud business, while at the same time, lowering the cost of cloud service. Earlier this month, Microsoft announced a killer cloud partnership with Qualcomm to accelerate Azure's next generation cloud services utilizing Qualcomm's newest 10-nanomweter Centriq 2400 platform.

According to Forbes, the cloud partnership will see Microsoft using the ARM-based processors in its Windows-based servers, instead of Intel chips. The move to Qualcomm-built ARM processors is aimed at lowering the IT costs by using a new whole kind of hardware that is more flexible and cost-effective, allowing the company to maintain its competitive stakes in the hotly contested cloud computing market.

Analysts Downgrades Amazon Due To The Growing Cloud Competitions

Microsoft may have been late to the cloud web hosting party, but it's been growing its Azure Cloud business at a remarkable speed, probably the fastest in the history of the cloud computing. The growth it so fast that it's prompted a financial service firm Pacific Crest Securities to downgrade its investment rating on another major cloud player just last week.

As mentioned earlier on Fortune, Pacific Crest analyst Brent Bracelin has made the tough decision of his career when he downgraded the $400 billion e-commerce behemoth, the Seattle-based Amazon.com. The analysts have lowered his price target on Amazon to $895 from $905 a share. However, Bracelin's recent decision has nothing to do with Amazon's recent cloud troubles, but for what its cloud computing competitor is doing now in the cloud market.

According to Bracelin, the main reason behind his action is that AWS is facing a real threat from the likes of Microsoft Azure in the brutal highly competitive cloud market. Pacific Crest has pointed to the fact that Microsoft Azure has continued to gain grounds and made major inroads. The company has made some major drives to sign great numbers of startups and Fortune 500 companies for Azure cloud service. Bracelin also stressed out that the recent AWS outage that took several major websites offline wasn't a key factor on his downgrade of Amazon.

Bracelin based his decision from multiple sources and feedback from cloud industry leaders that suggest to him that Microsoft Azure has just starting to gain some momentum with some of the industry's largest companies and also government agencies that are moving more aggressively to public cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure.

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Tags Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Azure, AWS, Amazon, Google, Cloud, Cloud Computing