Microsoft Shares Hit All-Time High As Company Strengthens Its Cloud Grip (usatoday.com) 43
Marco della Cava, reporting for USA Today: Microsoft shares surged 5% in early trading Friday, and passed a high set in 1999, helped by enthusiasm for progress in its cloud business. The stock was at up at $60.11, breezing past the $58.72 mark set in December 1999. Friday's rally follows Microsoft's latest quarterly report, out late Thursday, that beat analyst expectations for adjusted sales and profit and showcased a doubling of growth in its Azure cloud business, while reflecting continued strain from consumers' pivot away from PCs and traditional software purchases.Microsoft reported its Q1 2017 earnings yesterday, noting a revenue of $20.5 billion, which was higher than Wall Street's expectations. Company's Intellgent Cloud revenue was up 8 percent, whereas Azure revenue observed 116 percent growth year-on-year.
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I hate to break it to you but Amazon still has a huge fucking lead on cloud market share. It's not even close.
Re:this can't be (Score:4, Interesting)
..and Amazon will likely retain its lead in supporting large and/or public facing websites.
But there's a lot of businesses, usually non-IT focused ones, who will remain Microsoft shops. For them, hosting their internal, B2B, and smaller public applications on Azure makes a lot of sense, and it's going to be a growth area for MS for a while. Yes you can host your .NET applications lots of places, but all the Azure nonsense is baked into Visual Studio and so, to the extent it basically works, it's going to be the path of least resistance for a lot of people.
In a lot of ways, MS is in a different market than other cloud vendors.
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Fair point. I would expect most Microsoft shops to ultimately go with Azure for the reasons you outlined.
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For most people, the cloud offers convenience at the expense of a bunch of negatives that aren't immediately apparent to them, mostly relating to data security, data charges, and stability of software usability (ie unexpected workflow killing changes).
The reality is that their personal data needs are meager enough not to warrant datacenter storage and processing. It's just that those who want to charge monthly fees for every little thing are trying to squeeze the market in that direction.
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Have you ever heard of a discounted cash flow?
Azure is undoubtedly capital intensive.
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Because you don't invest in revenue of today. You invest in ideas of tomorrow.
And cloud is a cool buzzword.
I'm only half joking here. Those people who look at day to day revenue are not the ones who get wealthy investing. It's the risk takers who see the bigger picture that get wealthy or die trying.
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All of the long term wealthy people I know are in safe investments - mostly dividend paying stock issues and real estate.
Gamblers play for growth because they have nothing really to lose.
That's nice. Most of long term filthy stupidly wealthy people in the world are the opposite. They struck luck on a big investment that paid off, and had you bought MS shares last year you'd now be 30% richer and far richer than if you had put your money in an indexed fund.
Re: Yeesh... (Score:1)
They're opening new data centres all the time. I'd imagine those aren't free.
Huh. (Score:2)
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A fool and his money...
...don't consider Microsoft products because of bias?
That's where you were going with that, right?
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In this case a pretty scamming pump up the stock price upon the back of http://www.afr.com/technology/... [afr.com] a 40 billion dollar stock buy back. That is 40 billion dollars fewer shares in the market on top of the impact of buying those shares. So completely bullshit story and as soon as I read it, I did a search for "microsoft stock buyback" because I just knew, so obvious and they also raised their dividend. So that price will drop real quick once the stock buyback runs out and the dividend has been paid.
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A fool and his money...
Are easily multiplied.
Was that what you were about to say? After all if you bought shares at the time where all the news articles were saying Windows 10 is a disaster with slow uptake, user hate, and malware you would have made a 35% ROI in just over a year. That's good money right there.
Their stock has been split since 1999 right??? (Score:3)
Didn't Microsoft split their stock in the early 2000's? If so, this article doesn't apply.
Can we please get real reporting from real journalists?
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Yes. February 18, 2003 was the only split since their previous "high" Dec 23, 1999.
I think as long as it's clear that previous stock prices and/or volume data have been adjusted for splits an "all time high" still is valid even if it's not technically the highest price it ever traded at.
Leave the desktop alone (Score:1)
They could've included the Win7 UI as a gesture to those of us who don't use our PC with a touchscreen.
Welcome to the rental economy (Score:4, Insightful)
IT People, Esp. CIOs, read the Parent Post (Score:1)
You got it in one, my friend. Nailed it.
People are too blind or too apathetic to see this. I've been in IT for 3 decades and I can tell you that we are heading down a fairly dangerous path where no one controls their own data, where it's housed, who has access. Any of these companies could be severely compromised despite their promise of at-rest encryption, moving encryption, employee background checks. None of this matters a whit if you are not in control of your data 24/7/365.
These cloud providers change
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I concur that the benefits of "upgrades" have been a matter of diminishing returns for quite some time now. Even if there's upgrades and features now, I worry that in five years from now, the real value will be "not losing access to your data".I share your staunch aversion to software subscriptions for that reason.
The problem with relying on the Open Source community to fill the vacuum is that there are lots and lots of factors that are involved. People genuinely do appreciate and benefit from ubiquitous ac
Microsoft spin hit all-time high .. (Score:2)
Do you mean Microsoft shares are back at 1999 prices.