Microsoft Azure may be second to AWS in the cloud space, but the platform is expected to keep its lightning fast pace of growth for the foreseeable future.
So much so that, the Azure business could well be bigger than Windows for the Seattle based company.
These are the predictions of KeyBanc analysts, who are betting that Azure will deliver $26.4 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2021, while the contribution of Windows around that time is expected to total $20.3 billion.
This was revealed in a note distributed to clients on Thursday.
Redmond was not the first to the market in the public cloud domain, as Amazon had introduced its Amazon Web Services platform years earlier. But under the leadership of CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has placed a high priority on cloud with increased support for technologies, including Linux.
And the results are showing, as analysts Brent Bracelin and Clarke Jeffrie put it:
“This budding love affair for open-source is partially tied to cloud economics with Azure revenue posed to exceed Windows in three years.”
Although Microsoft does not talk in specifics how much revenue Azure brings in each quarter, it does regularly talk about the growth rate of its cloud platform. In October, for instance, which was the first quarter of fiscal year 2019 for the technology titan, Azure revenue increased 76%.
And this growth will continue leading to a shift happening in fiscal year 2021, where it is predicted that Azure will do see a growth uptick of 42.5% compared to an improvement of just 1% for Windows.
By that time, Azure will account for 16.6% of Microsoft’s business, with Windows coming in at 12.8% according to these predictions.
Impressive, considering just how integral Windows has been to the PC and server market for more than three decades. It will in all likelihood continue to be, but Azure seems to be turning into an undeniable success story.
