Microsoft’s plan to become a major cloud competitor is working
Microsoft hit a new milestone in its cloud services business this quarter: it’s now able to project over $20 billion in annual revenue. While that may seem like a big but arbitrary milestone, it’s an important one for Microsoft. In 2015, a year after being named the company’s CEO, Satya Nadella said he wanted Microsoft to hit that target sometime in 2018 — a big jump up from the $6.3 billion business it was back then. Depending on how you’re counting (Microsoft’s 2018 fiscal year started in July), Nadella delivered right on time or slightly ahead of schedule.
The milestone was announced in Microsoft’s quarterly earnings release this afternoon, where it reported $24.5 billion and a profit of $6.6 billion, up from $20.4 billion and $4.7...