Microsoft reported its Q4 earnings for FY19 earlier this month. And as many may have expected, the Azure cloud platform is stabilizing in downward trend.
It grew at 64%.
Sure, this may feel like a large number. But it is a notable downtick from the 76%, 76% and 73% growth rates that the IaaS platform registered in the previous three quarters. This is still a very healthy increase no matter how you look at it, but it is a clear sign of things to come.
Then again, it is a known fact that the bigger you get, the slower the growth is going to be.
Nevertheless, Azure is still a major success story, even with 64% being the slowest growth rate for the platform in the last four years.
Microsoft still wraps up the numbers, but its Intelligent Cloud business segment produced $11.39 billion in revenue in the quarter. This is the division that includes the Azure public cloud, Windows Server, SQL Server, Visual Studio, GitHub and the consulting services that Redmond provides.
Azure is part of the largest business unit at Microsoft — bigger than either Windows and Office.
According to this recent forecast from Gartner, cloud computing as a whole is expected to grow 17.5% to $214.3 billion next year. Microsoft, sitting in second place firmly, is set for a really solid showing, thanks to its 16% global share, compared to Google in third with just over 9%.
Still a long way to go to catch up to Amazon Web Services and its 32% slice of the market.
Top it off with the fact that Azure is seen as the best alternative to a major player, which the Redmond based technology company has used as a powerful leverage point.
And while the cloud platform may be slowing down in terms of earnings growth, the fact that the cloud market is still growing at a rapid rate, there still is plenty of room for significant revenue successes in the foreseeable future.
Not bad.
