Microsoft Q2 strong, says commercial cloud tops $14 billion annual run rate

Microsoft reported strong second quarter results, as the company said its commercial cloud annual run rate tops $14 billion.

Commercial cloud run rate is calculated by taking revenue from the last month of the quarter for Office 365 commercial, Azure, Dynamics 365, and other cloud properties and multiplying it by 12.

The company's various business units are intersecting with the cloud. For instance, Microsoft said that four out of five new Dynamics enterprise customers went with the cloud-based Dynamics 365.

Microsoft has also broadened its reach as the company noted that 65 million monthly active devices are using Office on iOS and Android, double the amount last year. In addition, Surface revenue was $1.32 billion in the second quarter, down from $1.35 billion a year ago.

Microsoft reported fiscal second quarter earnings of $5.2 billion, or 66 cents a share, on revenue of $24.1 billion. Non-GAAP earnings were 83 cents a share on non-GAAP revenue of $26.1 billion for the fiscal second quarter.

Wall Street was expecting Microsoft to report fiscal second quarter non-GAAP earnings of 79 cents a share (67 cents net) on revenue of $25.3 billion.

Microsoft completed its LinkedIn purchase on Dec. 8 and lumped the results in the productivity and business processes unit. LinkedIn brought in revenue of $228 million and a net loss of $100 million for that time period.

In a statement, CEO Satya Nadella said the company is focusing its cloud efforts on artificial intelligence as a way to grow.

Like most Microsoft quarters, there is a lot to digest. Among the key items:

• Revenue for productivity and business processes was $7.4 billion, up 10 percent from a year ago. Office commercial products and cloud services saw revenue growth of 5 percent. Office 365 commercial revenue was up 47 percent.
• Office consumer and cloud services revenue was up 22 percent. Office 365 has 24.9 million consumer subscribers.
• Dynamics 365 drove Dynamics product and cloud services revenue, which was up 7 percent in the second quarter.
• Revenue for intelligent cloud was $6.9 billion, up 8 percent. Server products and cloud services sales were up 12 percent.
• Azure revenue was up 93 percent, but Microsoft didn't divulge hard figures.
• Windows OEM revenue was up 5 percent as was Windows commercial products and cloud services sales.

Windows 7 users are more exposed to ransomware, says Microsoft