The disclosure lets investors line up Azure’s performance more directly against Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, whose parent companies already report cloud revenue in dollars every quarter.
Azure, where businesses rent computing power to run applications, SaaS, and to build and run AI models, is now Microsoft’s largest and fastest-growing product line by the company’s own figures. It accounted for roughly 36% of Microsoft’s $92.3 billion in quarterly revenue.
Amazon reports its earnings on Thursday. Analysts also expect its cloud, Amazon Web Services, to grow. It’s been the largest cloud since the beginning of time and no one expects Microsoft to best it right now. But with all of them reporting actual dollars, the race is on.