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Microsoft Beats Amazon in 12-Month Cloud Revenue

forbes.com

21–30 of 120 posts

Re: Microsoft Beats Amazon in 12-Month Cloud Revenue

#21
post #17
post #5

These numbers are very misleading considering they wrap up things like Office into “cloud revenue.” When talking about compute cloud they are still way behind Amazon although you don’t get that from the misleading headline.

On the flip side, I believe Amazon counts their Office and Drop/Box competitors under AWS as well so it may not be as apples to oranges as first perceived.

I think Dropbox uses their own infrastructure.

Re: Microsoft Beats Amazon in 12-Month Cloud Revenue

#22
post #5

These numbers are very misleading considering they wrap up things like Office into “cloud revenue.” When talking about compute cloud they are still way behind Amazon although you don’t get that from the misleading headline.

But they have transitioned office to a Saas model to do this. I used to buy office every 5 years, now I pay per month. It is also so much more than just the office apps, there is Onedrive and Sharepoint and email too. I would say that Microsoft have done a pretty good job of making it's products cloud based.

Re: Microsoft Beats Amazon in 12-Month Cloud Revenue

#23
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side, I believe Amazon counts their Office and Drop/Box competitors under AWS as well so it may not be as apples to oranges as first perceived.

I think Dropbox uses their own infrastructure.

He means Amazon lists Dropbox storage as a competitor to AWS storage services.

Re: Microsoft Beats Amazon in 12-Month Cloud Revenue

#24
post #5

These numbers are very misleading considering they wrap up things like Office into “cloud revenue.” When talking about compute cloud they are still way behind Amazon although you don’t get that from the misleading headline.

Wonder if AWS reports the revenue from running retail on top of AWS? Retail does need to pay for AWS services..

Re: Microsoft Beats Amazon in 12-Month Cloud Revenue

#25

According to Gartner ( https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3884500 ), the 2017 revenues were: Amazon: 12.2B Microsoft: 3.1B Assuming Amazon continues on the same 25% YoY trend, it would be 15B in 2018. Microsoft could beat that number by reaching a 400% growth rate. That would be pretty amazing. But it's not the case.

This is comparing totally different numbers than what is being compared in the OP.

I'm not exactly sure what Gartner includes in its "IaaS" revenue figures, nor am I sure what Forbes is including in its "cloud" revenue figures, but even Amazon's official press release [1] (which is what the OP is comparing) gives completely different numbers for 2017 AWS revenues than Gartner.

1: https://ir.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-detail...

Re: Microsoft Beats Amazon in 12-Month Cloud Revenue

#26
post #12
post #5

These numbers are very misleading considering they wrap up things like Office into “cloud revenue.” When talking about compute cloud they are still way behind Amazon although you don’t get that from the misleading headline.

This is nearly a "no true Scotsman" definition of cloud revenue, where if Amazon doesn't have a product in a market segment it shouldn't count. Google and Microsoft both have offerings in the cloud SaaS office suite market segment, and it's a real liability for Amazon that they do not.

Not really. When people buy Office 365, they're primarily purchasing a the MS Office product, and the cloud just happens to be the mechanism of delivery. That doesn't really make this cloud revenue.

Imagine if MS was forced to "unbundle" Office 365. Consumers could purchase a license to run MS Office on any platform. On of which might be hosted Azure. What percent of the Office 365 revenue would accrue to the products division compared to the cloud division. Sincere guess: 90%+.

Another hypothetical scenario. Imagine if Apple offered a deal on iPhones. Get an iPhone for free as long as you sign up for a grossly overpriced $1000 iCloud contract. All of a sudden Apple would have hundreds of billion in "cloud revenue". But no reasonable person would all of a sudden say that they're now the biggest cloud provider in the world.

Re: Microsoft Beats Amazon in 12-Month Cloud Revenue

#27
post #5

These numbers are very misleading considering they wrap up things like Office into “cloud revenue.” When talking about compute cloud they are still way behind Amazon although you don’t get that from the misleading headline.

Wonder if AWS reports the revenue from running retail on top of AWS? Retail does need to pay for AWS services..

They might but I don't think the retail infrastructure is big enough to compare to say the office 365 use.

I may be wrong but I just don't think it's costing them billions in AWS infrastructure to run.

Re: Microsoft Beats Amazon in 12-Month Cloud Revenue

#28

These numbers are so misleading. I understand why they are the numbers published, but AWS vs Azure last time I heard real numbers was approximately a 3:1 market share ratio. Including Office 365, Dynamics, etc doesn't make sense to me. We don't include Prime in Amazon Cloud, AFAIK.

AWS has WorkMail and WorkDocs, which is in the same space as Office 365. Amazon Connect sounds similar to Microsoft Dynamics, though I'm not really familiar with either. Amazon isn't currently a major player in that arena, but they are still competing under the Amazon banner.

They're completely separate products. Connect is call center facilitation software that can utilize lambda (and correspondingly a suite of other services) when routing and leverage AWS resources for metric collection and logging. It integrates with both your typical desk phone or a computer via WebRTC.

Microsoft Dynamics is a CRM product. Completely different spheres.

Re: Microsoft Beats Amazon in 12-Month Cloud Revenue

#29
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nearly a "no true Scotsman" definition of cloud revenue, where if Amazon doesn't have a product in a market segment it shouldn't count. Google and Microsoft both have offerings in the cloud SaaS office suite market segment, and it's a real liability for Amazon that they do not.

Not really. When people buy Office 365, they're primarily purchasing a the MS Office product, and the cloud just happens to be the mechanism of delivery. That doesn't really make this cloud revenue. Imagine if MS was forced to "unbundle" Office 365. Consumers could purchase a license to run MS Office on any platform. On of which might be hosted Azure. What percent of the Office 365 revenue would accrue to the product…

>Not really. When people buy Office 365, they're primarily purchasing a the MS Office product, and the cloud just happens to be the mechanism of delivery.

And when people buy Amazon RDS, they're primarily purchasing a database product, and the cloud just happens to be the mechanism of delivery.

Imagine if Amazon was forced to "unbundle" Amazon RDS. Consumers could purchase a license to run the database on any platform. On of which might be hosted AWS. What percent of the Amazon RDS revenue would accrue to the products division compared to the cloud division...

--

Yes, this is the literal definition of a "no true scotsman" fallacy.

Re: Microsoft Beats Amazon in 12-Month Cloud Revenue

#30
post #5

These numbers are very misleading considering they wrap up things like Office into “cloud revenue.” When talking about compute cloud they are still way behind Amazon although you don’t get that from the misleading headline.

Or you could look at it like Amazon is way behind Microsoft in Saas.
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