Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) Azure Gains Ground On Amazon’s AWS

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is still a long way behind Amazon in the cloud computing wars, but at least it’s headed in the right direction.

As MarketWatch reports, the tech titan is indeed gaining ground versus Amazon AWS:

Microsoft’s cloud revenue clocked in at $3.13 billion in 2017, up from $1.58 billion in 2016, a 98% jump, according to research firm Gartner, which reported on the 2017 worldwide Infrastructure-as-a-Service market on Wednesday.

That means Microsoft held 13.3% of the $23.58 billion public cloud market in 2017, up from its 8.7% share in 2016. And that momentum doesn’t appear to be abating much. In its latest quarterly earnings, Microsoft said revenue from its Azure public cloud service surged 85% from the year ago period.

The overall cloud market is growing as well, will revenues surging 30% industry-wide last year. Amazon remains on top with a 51.8% market share, but that’s down from 53.7% in 2016.

Microsoft Corporation shares closed at $108.04 on Friday, up $0.47 (+0.44%). Year-to-date, MSFT has gained 27.45%, versus a 7.18% rise in the benchmark S&P 500 index during the same period.

MSFT currently has a StockNews.com POWR Rating of A (Strong Buy), and is ranked #1 of 68 stocks in the Software – Application category.