Why Microsoft Azure wins with enterprise customers

As the outdated IT truism goes, nobody ever got fired for acquiring IBM. Now, in the cloud era, many are starting up to utilize the similar logic to one more effectively-identified vendor: Microsoft.

For enterprises with extensive Microsoft footprints—spanning Business office, Windows, Dynamics, Outlook, and other well-known business applications—turning to Microsoft Azure products and services as portion of a cloud approach can definitely glimpse like the path of the very least resistance.

“If you have to go to the cloud with constrained methods, it is a safer path to go with Microsoft and use many of the applications your workers are acquainted with,” said Carla Arend, senior plan director for software package and infrastructure at IDC in Europe.

When Amazon World-wide-web Expert services (AWS) remains the distinct sector chief for pure cloud infrastructure, Microsoft is catching up. And the lingering results of the pandemic are supporting it obtain ground fast.

In a January 2021 earnings contact, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella touted file cloud earnings—which incorporates revenue from Business office 365 and other business applications—of $sixteen billion for the quarter, which was up a staggering 34% year-over-year. 

Azure has because reached a twenty% share of the cloud infrastructure sector, according to Synergy Investigation, up from 10% in 2017. Microsoft’s capability to flex its sizable sales muscle and leverage its husband or wife ecosystem to cross-offer Azure has served it grow the cloud division into one particular of the principal vendors in the sector.

“Digital capacity is essential to both resilience and development. It is no extended enough to just adopt technologies. Enterprises need to construct their possess technologies to compete and grow. Microsoft is powering this shift with the world’s biggest and most extensive cloud system,” Nadella gushed. Despite his self-fascinated enthusiasm, there is real truth to what Nadella said about Microsoft’s position in the cloud.

Greater the satan you know, and for many that satan is Microsoft

Microsoft’s deep roots in the company, predominantly about user-experiencing technologies, definitely appeals to midsize enterprises that may possibly be lagging in their digital procedures and that are searching for a trusted husband or wife to assistance ramp up their cloud use. “For midsize and conservative companies, the business tends to be Azure’s to eliminate,” said Paul Miller, a principal analyst at Forrester Investigation.

Copyright © 2021 IDG Communications, Inc.