Close Menu
GeekBlog

    Subscribe to Updates

    Get the latest creative news from FooBar about art, design and business.

    What's Hot

    My 6 Favorite Portable Peripherals for Laptops

    August 3, 2025

    Swan’s new stacked air fryer looks oddly familiar…

    August 3, 2025

    Bring Spider-Man All the Way Home With 20% Off This Iconic Lego Set

    August 3, 2025
    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram Threads
    GeekBlog
    • Home
    • Mobile
    • Reviews
    • Tech News
    • Deals & Offers
    • Gadgets
      • How-To Guides
    • Laptops & PCs
      • AI & Software
    • Blog
    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
    GeekBlog
    Home»AI & Software»Microsoft reports massive cloud uptick as CMA questions licensing
    AI & Software

    Microsoft reports massive cloud uptick as CMA questions licensing

    Michael ComaousBy Michael ComaousAugust 2, 2025No Comments4 Mins Read0 Views
    Share Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email Copy Link
    Microsoft reports massive cloud uptick as CMA questions licensing
    Share
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Email Copy Link

    Microsoft Cloud grew 27%, with revenue of $46.7bn, in its fourth-quarter 2025 financial results, the tech giant has reported. While the company has capitalised on linking its large software portfolio to cloud-based growth and, in particular, adoption of Copilot artificial intelligence (AI) services, the UK competition watchdog has found some of its licensing practices limit competition in the public cloud market.

    Analyst Forrester recently warned that the rapid adoption of Microsoft Copilot is forcing the hand of IT decision-makers. But enterprise IT buyers continue to be drawn to Microsoft platforms, which bridge on-premise and public cloud IT infrastructure as well as provide a route to cloud-native computing and AI.

    In fact, the company’s latest financial results demonstrate its effectiveness at connecting the dots to deliver value to enterprise IT buyers. Revenue increased 18% to $76.4bn compared with the same period in 2024.

    Its M365 commercial cloud increased revenue by 18%, with the company seeing average revenue per user (ARPU) growth driven by its E5 and M365 Copilot offerings. The company said it experienced 6% growth in paid M365 commercial seats driven primarily by growth of its small and medium business and frontline worker offerings.

    M365 commercial products revenue increased 9%, which Microsoft put down to higher-than-expected Office 2024 transactional purchasing, while M365 consumer cloud revenue grew 20%, driven by a price increase in January, and subscriber growth of 8%.

    Revenue in its Intelligent Cloud business grew 26% to $29.9bn. This was driven by 27% revenue growth in its server products and cloud services, and Azure and other cloud services revenue, which posted growth of 39%.

    When asked about demand for the Microsoft Azure cloud, CEO Satya Nadella referenced the company’s recent win with Nestlé, which is moving its SAP system from on-premise to the Azure public cloud. Nestlé migrated six ageing, regionally distributed on-premise datacentres to the Microsoft cloud platform, deploying Rise with SAP on Azure to unify and modernise its SAP landscape.

    He described the migration as “a classic example”, which, according to Nadella, is a pretty healthy business, and is likely to grow even more. “It turns out that we’re still not anywhere close to the finish line,” he added.

    Nadella predicted that only half of such on-premise to public cloud migrations have yet to be completed.

    The other growth area for the Azure business is deploying workloads for cloud native computing. “These are scaling in a big way,” he said.

    With some of these deployments, Nadella said organisations are moving to Azure for its AI capabilities. “These all build on each other, which is what’s driving our growth,” he added.

    Looking at how Microsoft sees the monetisation of AI, Nadella spoke about the relationship between the technology and demand for greater computational power. “If you even subscribe to the point of view that intelligence is basically lots of compute, that means compute is going to grow, and you’ve got to use it as efficiently as possible to just keep creating intelligence,” he said.

    Nadella pointed out that AI uses data layers and application servers, which have to be deployed on IT infrastructure. He expects these will need to grow by an order of magnitude. Then, there is the storage and compute requirements of AI-accelerated graphics processing units (GPUs). “The other thing we track is that every GPU requires storage and compute,” he added.

    The quarterly results were published just before the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) regulator in the UK published its final report looking at competition in the public cloud market.

    The CMA reported that Microsoft’s licensing practices have the effect of reducing competition in cloud services markets by adversely impacting the competitiveness of AWS and Google in the supply of cloud services.

    “These licensing practices are a feature that, in combination with the other features we have identified, including Microsoft’s large and increasing market share in these markets, further restricts the already limited choice and attractiveness of alternative products and suppliers,” the CMA said.

    cloud CMA licensing massive Microsoft questions reports uptick
    Follow on Google News Follow on Flipboard
    Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Telegram Email Copy Link
    Previous ArticleF1: How to Watch and Stream the 2025 Hungarian Grand Prix
    Next Article Multiple brands launch Radeon AI Pro R9700 GPUs featuring blower cooling and 32GB memory for workstation builders
    Michael Comaous
    • Website

    Related Posts

    2 Mins Read

    Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints, Answers for Aug. 3 #314

    2 Mins Read

    Anthropic cuts off OpenAI’s access to its Claude models

    3 Mins Read

    ‘We ready?’: Marvel star Tom Holland reveals full look at Spider-Man: Brand New Day suit – and it’s a moving tribute to the webslinger’s other live-action costumes

    3 Mins Read

    PayPal and Venmo outage hit users Friday morning – what we know

    4 Mins Read

    I lost my sister to online harms, the OSA is failing vulnerable people

    7 Mins Read

    Scottish Premiership Soccer: Stream Motherwell vs. Rangers Live From Anywhere

    Top Posts

    30-Year Fixed-Rate Mortgage Decreases: Mortgage Interest Rates Today for Aug. 1, 2025

    August 1, 202510 Views

    Are There Cordless Vacuums With Replaceable Batteries?

    July 1, 20259 Views

    Deal: Netgear 4G LTE Broadband Modem is just $19.99!

    August 1, 20256 Views
    Stay In Touch
    • Facebook
    • YouTube
    • TikTok
    • WhatsApp
    • Twitter
    • Instagram
    Latest Reviews

    Subscribe to Updates

    Get the latest tech news from FooBar about tech, design and biz.

    Most Popular

    30-Year Fixed-Rate Mortgage Decreases: Mortgage Interest Rates Today for Aug. 1, 2025

    August 1, 202510 Views

    Are There Cordless Vacuums With Replaceable Batteries?

    July 1, 20259 Views

    Deal: Netgear 4G LTE Broadband Modem is just $19.99!

    August 1, 20256 Views
    Our Picks

    My 6 Favorite Portable Peripherals for Laptops

    August 3, 2025

    Swan’s new stacked air fryer looks oddly familiar…

    August 3, 2025

    Bring Spider-Man All the Way Home With 20% Off This Iconic Lego Set

    August 3, 2025

    Subscribe to Updates

    Get the latest creative news from FooBar about art, design and business.

    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram Pinterest Threads
    • About Us
    • Contact us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Disclaimer
    • Terms and Conditions
    © 2025 geekblog. Designed by Pro.

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.