Every cloud has a golden lining as Microsoft posts revenue increase
Microsoft is riding the crest of a cloud computing gold rush to power growth, according to the latest set of financial results to be released by the tech giant.
Over the three months to 31 March Microsoft notched up revenues of £21.7bn with gross margins of $14.6bn and an operating income of $6.6bn, representing year-on-year increases of six per cent, one per cent and five per cent respectively.
These figures were bolstered by a 106 per cent increase in commercial cloud revenue due to increasing usage of platforms such as Microsoft Azure, Office 365, Bing and Xbox Live. This helped to raise the annualised revenue run rate to $6.3bn.
Satya Nadella, chief executive officer at Microsoft, said: “Customers continue to choose Microsoft to transform their business and as a result we saw incredible growth across our cloud services this quarter. 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.”
Kevin Turner, chief operating officer at Microsoft, added: “We remain focused on strong execution from our sales teams. Around the world we're seeing high interest in deployment of our cloud and server products, as well as participation in the enterprise early adopter program for Windows 10.”
Microsoft is still struggling with a wider downturn in PC sales however with office commercial products and services revenue dipping two per cent.