Microsoft's cloud keeps printing cash, Surface not so much as Windows giant pockets $119m profit a day Microsoft on Wednesday reported $33.1bn in revenue for its fiscal 2020 Q1, representing a 14 per cent increase over the same period last year, and profits of $10.7bn, up 21 per cent. Its results, led by the company's Azure cloud service, were slightly better than analysts had expected: the average estimate came to $32.23bn, …
They don't care about windows anymore. Its a means to an end, getting people to use azure and services. Once they are able to get rid of windows for something that does the same and doesn't cost them money (opensource) they will.
Windows as a platform to Nadella is dead, Azure is his baby and where his focus is. Windows is just a money sink.
If they are not able to replace windows with something free to them, it will become subscription only, to keep the money flowing for it (and the replacement will probably also).
What a couple of cynics.
Imagine the gargantuan tasks of keeping existing apps working, moving your dev tooling and OS architecture on over time? (I'm guessing you aren't coders)
How about the extensive work on Windows Core? One Core.
MS are terrible at support, hateful at licensing - but you do (I do) get the impression Windows is part of their DNA and they spend time and effort on modernising (watch Channel 9 for their daily standup meetings on Windows and how long builds take etc)
Anyway, don't let me get int he way of the myopic hate. I feel a bit sorry for the people toiling away inside MS trying to make something beautiful only to get Internet derision from the unworthy
I've got nothing against the developers at MS, its the managers who sought to cut costs by firing their QA people that I have the problem with, plus the designers who have managed to come up with about 4 different UI paradigms in the past few years - all of which are mashed together in an incoherent manner in Windows.
Was a developer, also have a BSc in CSAI, but now have been primarily a windows admin for 17 years.
Microsoft have moved their focus to Azure and Azure services. Cross platform development, as they now know that server side for future services is on linux, as the cost of windows and the advantages that windows provided in terms of management is gone in the 'cloud' (micro-services) era, which Nadella is all in on.
I don't imagine any gargantuan task in keeping exists apps working, why would they, they are a 'cloud' provider, dropping windows in the mid term and compatibility means doing nothing. When they have enough companies migrated to the 'cloud' and their on premise solutions are so bare bones and require azure services to function anyway that most just don't have it. Along with office 365 being available with full functionality in the browser (with partial offline support) that there is no need for a native binary they have nothing to keep developing windows.
They have VS which they need to migrate, which they have started by creating VS code. They will keep expanding on that, they bring out a almost complete version with the remaining functionality done via Azure.
For Azure services that they have that still use windows, can still run on the core version that they use, but will require far less development as it will have a far narrowed scope.
To state upfront, I couldn't care one way or the other, who's bigger, better, faster, Amazon or Microsoft. But when you look at the numbers, Amazon has consistently held market share while Azure growth numbers ramped up, and then started to shrink. Azure growth is now slowing faster than Amazon, and Amazon still have around 50% Market share according to Gartner, IDC etc.
The reason people are suspicious of O365 numbers is that they included both SaaS and traditional licencing in one convenient package.
Make no mistake, that's not a bad thing for Microsoft because they aren't losing customers to cloud and are slowly forcing customers to migrate.
But the need to include O365 on MS cloud revenue does say something about the state of the cloud market if three of the big 5 all play this trick and the only other player that doesn't uses AWS for hosting a significant amount of its infrastructure.
TL;DR: MS use O365 in cloud revenue to mask the fact AWS won the cloud race by a significant margin. Proof in a few more years when O365 and Azure are stagnant or decreasing.
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