Microsoft sees cloud business growth, but supply woes continue for Xbox

Microsoft Corp on Tuesday forecast a strong end to the calendar year thanks to its booming cloud business but said supply chain woes will continue to dog key units such as those producing its Surface laptops and Xbox gaming consoles.

The company beat Wall Street expectations for its first quarter ended Sept. 30, with pandemic-induced demand for the software giant's cloud-based services driving sales.

Contracts for cloud services provided by Microsoft, Amazon.com Inc's AWS and Alphabet Inc-owned Google Cloud have surged since last year when the COVID-19 pandemic shut offices and schools, pushing more activity online.

First-quarter revenue growth for Azure, the company's flagship cloud-computing business, came in at 48 percent in constant currency to beat analysts' estimates of 47.5 percent, according to consensus data from Visible Alpha. Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft, said that the company also expected "broad based growth" for the unit in the fiscal second quarter.

Azure's growth rate is the best direct measure of competition with rivals such as AWS and Google Cloud as Microsoft does not break out revenue from the cloud-computing unit.

Microsoft appeared to hold off Google Cloud's rising challenge. Google Cloud said on Tuesday its revenue surged by 45 percent to $4.99 billion, but failed to live up to estimates of $5.2 billion.

Revenue at the firm's other business units that house Windows software, the Teams messaging service and LinkedIn professional social networking platform also beat analyst expectations.

The supply chain issues affecting much of the global tech industry had mixed consequences for Microsoft.

Hood said Microsoft has continued to increase its cloud computing margins despite higher data center construction costs because it keeps adding more profitable services to those data centers. 

Hood also said that the company was able to ship more Xbox S and X gaming consoles than it expected in the first quarter - sales of gaming consoles and accessories were up 166 percent as the company continued to see strong demand for new models after the pandemic forced millions to seek entertainment at home.

But Microsoft and its rivals have been unable to keep up with demand because of the global chip crunch. Hood told Reuters the company expects Xbox demand to continue to exceed supply in the company's second quarter, which includes Christmas.

She also said that sales of the company's Surface computers, which declined 17 percent in the fiscal first quarter, were likely to keep sinking in the second quarter, with supply chain shortages hitting premium items in the lineup.

Microsoft's revenue from selling Windows to PC makers grew 10 percent year over year, beating the overall PC market, which only grew 3.9 percent over the same period because of supply constraints, according to data from IDC.

Hood said that the company was able to outperform in the PC market because of its strength in selling licenses for Windows destined for corporate customers, where it gets more revenue per license and has better market share.

Overall, revenue rose 22 percent to $45.32 billion in the first quarter ended Sept. 30, beating expectations of about $43.97 billion.

Net income rose to $20.51 billion, or $2.71 per share. The company said its results included a $3.3 billion net income tax benefit.

On an adjusted basis it earned $2.27 per share, trumping analyst expectations of $2.07 per share.

For the fiscal second quarter, Microsoft predicted a midpoint of $18.23 billion in revenue for its intelligent cloud business for the fiscal second quarter, above estimates of $17.84 billion, according to Refinitiv data.

First-quarter revenue from "Intelligent Cloud" surged 31% to $17 billion. Analysts had expected a figure of $16.58 billion, according to Refinitiv data.

Microsoft's forecast for its software app and Windows centric segments with midpoints of $15.83 billion and $16.55 billion, respectively, were also above Refinitiv estimates of $15.40 billion and $15.51 billion.

Shares of the company, which have risen nearly 40 percent this year, were marginally up in extended trading.

-reuters

Oracle adds 10 new cloud services

MANILA, Philippines — U.S. multinational computer company Oracle Corp has added 10 new cloud computing services in line with the company’s bid to deliver the most comprehensive cloud portfolio in the industry.

The new services, which will be available on a subscription basis, expand the company’s portfolio of application, social, platform, and infrastructure services.

“Unlike other clouds that offer services in one or two layers, Oracle Cloud is the only cloud that delivers a broad portfolio of integrated services across applications, social, platform, and infrastructure,” the company said in a press release.

Oracle said that the new services will help “customers and partners further capitalize on the power of cloud computing.”

The 10 new services are the compute cloud, object storage cloud, database cloud, java cloud, business intelligence cloud, documents cloud, mobile cloud, database backup cloud, billing and revenue management cloud, and cloud marketplace.

“Oracle Cloud provides the industry’s most complete suite of modern, enterprise SaaS applications including Human Capital Management, Customer Experience, and Enterprise Resource Management, with built-in business intelligence, social and mobile capabilities,” the company said.

Flexibility is also accorded to customers as they can choose to deploy Oracle software in traditional on-premise data centers, private clouds, or in other public clouds.

According to the company, they currently support nine million customers and 19 billion transactions daily on 7,000 servers and 200 petabytes of storage in 13 data centers in the world.

source: interaksyon.com

Start-ups to receive cloud support with Amazon Web Services’ new AWS Activate

MANILA, Philippines — Start-ups can now expect a boost in their cloud adoption as Amazon Web Services launches AWS Activate.

AWS Activate bundles resources in packages, designed to enable startups of different types to easily and quickly get started with AWS and successfully use the AWS platform to help grow their businesses.

The bundle includes a structured package of resources for startups, including AWS credits, training, developer support, a special startup community forum and special offers from third parties.

“Many of the world’s most successful startups already build their businesses on the AWS cloud,” said Adam Selipsky, vice president, Amazon Web Services. “Based on feedback from VCs (venture capitalists), startups and entrepreneurs, we developed AWS Activate to help even more startup organizations get going quickly by leveraging AWS to help build their business. We’re happy to offer this to startups of all kinds from around the world today,”

AWS Activate is organized into two packages: a Self-Starter package, which any startup can apply for, and a Portfolio package, which can be applied for by startups in select accelerator, incubator, venture capital seed funds or entrepreneur organizations. Each package includes varied levels of resources to help fit customers’ needs.

Startups receiving either package get access to the Startup Forum, where AWS experts and other startup customers can share best practices. The forum gives startups a way to learn from and interact with a community of peers building world-changing apps on AWS.

In addition, startups accepted into AWS Activate may have access to special offers, such as product discounts, from select third-party companies in the AWS ecosystem, providing startups with additional valuable technologies and tools.

“Amazon Web Services has been an invaluable partner in Kickstart Ventures’ mission of helping startups in the Philippines start faster and scale,” said Minette Navarette, president, Kickstart Ventures. “The sixteen startups in our portfolio are among the best in the Philippines, and an important part of their business is the underlying cloud platform that AWS provides. AWS Activate will provide even more support and resources for our startup companies to be successful.”

source: interaksyon.com

Oracle launches data center to cater demand from cloud customers

SINGAPORE – To meet the growing demand from customers for cloud-based services, as well as offering Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), software giant Oracle launched on Thursday its own data center in the island city-state.

“The new Singapore data center is our latest data center investment in the fast-grwoing Asia Pacific market,” said Yen Yen Tan, senior vice president for application sales at Oracle Corporation Asia Pacific in a media briefing coinciding with the Oracle CloudWorld 2013 event here at the Marina Bay Sands Expo & Convention Center.

The enterprise software company said that the data center will provide their customers and partners subscription based, self service access to Oracle’s Fusion Applications — an open-standards based applications for business to maximize areas in enterprise resource planning, human capital and talent management, sales and marketing, and customer service and support.

“We are going to lead in the cloud space in Asia Pacific,” said Tan. “With our next generation of Fusion Applications now available in a hosted, subscription-based model, we are giving our customers the time-to-value and ease-of-use flexibility they’ve been waiting for.”

The new data center will use the company’s flagship systems for running critical business applications such as Oracle Engineered Systems, Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, and Oracle Exadata, which the tech provider described as pre-integrated IT infrastructure systems that are optimized for the enterprise space.

The company also said that they have created a cloud service that is modular, which is based on standard configurations so that customers can decide what they want to deploy –- as little data or as much data as they want.

“The enterprise cloud is helping businesses find efficiency and productivity gains through scalable, agile software solutions,” said Leslie Ong, managing director at Oracle Singapore. The new data center in Singapore underscores Oracle’s ongoing commitment to offering cloud solutions to our customers.”

Managed and supported by staff from Oracle, the data center will be housed at Equinix, a prime location for data centers in Singapore.

“We have chosen Singapore for this data center because of its excellent telecommunications infrastructure, efficient and well-qualified manpower,” said Ong.

source: interaksyon.com