Microsoft Tops Estimates Amid Nadella's Cloud Transformation
- Results bolstered by Web-based services, Office 365 software
- Shares rise after quarterly results surpass analyst estimates
Microsoft Beats Estimates: Is the Turnaround Working?
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Satya Nadella’s turnaround of Microsoft Corp. persisted in the fiscal second quarter, as more businesses bought cloud services and Internet-based tools like Azure and Office 365 from a company once mainly known for personal-computer software.
Revenue from Azure -- Microsoft’s platform that sells data-center based computing power and services -- more than doubled as customers signed up for pricier offerings that can handle machine learning and process large reams of information. Subscriptions for Office 365 productivity software also lured both businesses and consumers, and even Windows sales came in better than the overall PC market, fueled by the adoption of Windows 10.