Microsoft's continued cloud success may depend on increased flexibility and innovation

It's no hole-and-corner that Microsoft's deject business has been ane of the driving forces behind its string of solid earnings reports. This calendar week, the company'due south cloud efforts helped push information technology to another impressive quarter, with full revenues exceeding $33 billion. That's on top of an overall yearly revenue jump of xiv percent, bringing Microsoft's earnings to $125.eight billion in revenue for the 2022 fiscal year.

As Microsoft nears the beginning of its 2022 fiscal year, still, it's important to consider how the company managed this success and can continue the momentum going. That's especially true when looking at what sets Microsoft's cloud offerings apart from competitors like Amazon Spider web Services (AWS) and Google.

Microsoft'south partner arroyo, hybrid cloud are an reward

For Ryan Duguid, chief evangelist for Microsoft partner Nintex, one of Microsoft'southward biggest advantages is its rounded approach to working with partners. "They went PaaS from the beginning," Duguid says, referring to Microsoft's "Platform every bit a Service" [PaaS] approach. "While AWS congenital a clear advantage in the early days by helping customers elevator and shift legacy workloads through VM based deployments, Microsoft focused from the beginning on edifice value-added services, targeting their partner aqueduct with capabilities designed to accelerate fourth dimension to productivity and ROI when building sophisticated applications."

Duguid also says Microsoft's emphasis on hybrid deployments, embracing the idea that individual enterprise customers will move to the cloud at different paces, is what helps it stand autonomously. "Microsoft supports hybrid deployments not but by bridging the engineering divide but also through a highly favorable licensing structure that provides full portability every bit customers cull to motility workloads over time."

It's this focus on the hybrid cloud that will be key for Microsoft in the future as well, says Chris Voce, Vice President and Research Manager for inquiry firm Forrester. "I believe [Microsoft'south] emphasis on hybrid deject, integrated solutions, and vertical focus are disquisitional," Voce says. "IoT isn't a monolithic trend, information technology'southward fabricated up of several different use cases like tracking and logistics or predictive maintenance. In order to capture customers, [Microsoft] has to understand the business challenges that they face up and present solutions to those issues."

A major focus for delivering those solutions will lie in Microsoft's power to integrate services like Dynamics, Azure, and Azure IoT Suite together, Voce says. For Microsoft's partners, this is something the company is already executing on by blending Azure with services like Function 365 and Dynamics 365.

"The combination of these platforms provides awarding developers with far greater choice than any other cloud provider when it comes to leveraging capabilities beyond pure PaaS and IaaS," says Duguid.

Future as well looks vivid

Azure Corporate Vice President Julia White demonstrates "holoportation" with oral communication translation at Inspire 2022.

Despite its continued success in deject services, Microsoft's Q4 study showed a general slowdown in growth for Azure. But Voce says positive indicators in Azure and Office 365 results indicate that Microsoft is standing to do well with its cloud strategy.

"Microsoft's greatest strength is its ability to talk to customers in their ain language and understand verticals," Voce says. That's reflected in the response from enterprises, which see Microsoft's approach as 'realistic and flexible,'" according to Voce. However, there's nevertheless the specter of AWS, which Voce calls "the 800lb gorilla" that, with its combination of cloud experience and momentum, is Microsoft'due south biggest hurdle going forward.

Looking toward 2022, Duguid sees artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning as clear areas where Microsoft can double downwards through democratizing admission to general tools and capabilities for developers. Likewise, as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella touched on during his recent Inspire keynote, data and the ability for companies and developers to easily scale their operations will continue to be important touchstones.

"During Inspire, information technology was articulate that the scale they are pursuing is across anything we've ever seen before in traditional relational databases," Duguid says. "Simply at the same fourth dimension, they are working closely with industry leaders similar SAP and Adobe to support the Open Data Initiative (ODI) so that customers can collaborate with a unified data store that can drive more seamless customer journeys."

At Inspire, Microsoft showed off a flashy demo of its "holoportation" technology, which allows anyone with a HoloLens headset to merge virtual and physical worlds. While it'southward nevertheless early days for this tech, it has the potential to bolster Microsoft'southward enterprise offerings in a large manner. We're already seeing this with Microsoft's mixed reality Dynamics applications and the enterprise focus of the HoloLens 2, simply Duguid hints that this could be just a taste of what'southward to come.

"I'd say we're on the verge of something big hither, breaking down the advice barriers posed by concrete location, culture, and linguistic communication."

Portable (and affordable) power accessories we love

Each and every one of these charging gadgets will keep your favorite gear and gadgets going for longer, and none of them costs more than $xxx.

VisionTek 8,000 mAh micro-USB power bank ($13 at Dell)

This meaty dual-output powerbank can quickly recharge any and all your devices, thanks to a 2-amp "fast charge feature," using its micro-USB out port. Its uncomplicated blueprint includes an LED indicator, and it costs most as much as a single ticket to the movies.

Panasonic eneloop AA batteries (From $13 at Dell)

Panasonic's rechargeable batteries are among the best available, and but a couple of them will keep your favorite remote, mice or other peripherals powered up when y'all need them. They're likewise eco. And the company'due south affordable charger fits and charges both AA and AAA batteries at the aforementioned time.

Belkin Qi Wireless Charging Pad ($30 at Dell)

This unobtrusive Qi wireless charging pad looks skilful (and kind of like a UFO …) and easily charges all your Qi-uniform device upward to 5W. Its LED indicator lights upward when you lot're charging. And it costs just $30.

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