Microsoft and Amazon report massive growth in cloud business

Microsoft and Amazon have both reported dramatic growth in revenues for their most recent respective quarters. 

Microsoft claims its cloud business grew by 58% in the quarter ending March 31, 2018. This has contributed to overall revenue increase to $26.8 billion, which is a percentage growth of 16% compared with the same quarter last year.

Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer at Microsoft, said: “With consistent investment and strong sales execution, this quarter we achieved better than expected performance across all segments.

“We delivered double-digit revenue and operating income growth driven by 58% growth in our commercial cloud revenue.”

Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft, said: “Our results this quarter reflect the trust people and organizations are placing in the Microsoft Cloud.

“We are innovating across key growth categories of infrastructure, AI, productivity, and business applications to deliver differentiated value to customers.”

Meanwhile Amazon Web Services said it generated cloud services sales of $5.44 billion in the quarter ending March 31, 2018, which is said by CNBC to be a 49% increase.

Amazon is believed to be the cloud market leader with more market than the next several companies combined -- including Microsoft. However with Microsoft, Google and Oracle aggressively pursuing more market share, AWS' lead my be diminished somewhat within the next year or two.

Most observers still say AWS is the favourite to win the Pentagon cloud contract. If it does the company's lead could prove to be unassailable. The Pentagon has reportedly indicated there is no clear frontrunner at this stage and the bidding process remains open.