Microsoft Data Center Crunch Persists Despite Heavy Spending

Microsoft Corp. is still suffering from a computing capacity crunch despite massive spending on data centers, a scenario that weighed on the company’s closely watched Azure cloud unit.

During the first quarter, the company lavished a whopping $34.9 billion on capital expenditures including leases, which indicates outlays on server farms. That was up about $10 billion from the previous period, and Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood said spending will increase again in the current fiscal quarter.