Sales of Microsoft’s cloud offerings to commercial customers, which includes Office 365 subscriptions and Azure, its cloud computing platform, grew 32 percent to $22.1 billion. Revenue is poised to grow further as price increases for Office 365, which includes Word and the Teams communications app, go into effect in March. The price hikes could produce $5 billion in extra revenue this year, according to Wedbush Securities.
Azure is the second-largest cloud platform, after Amazon Web Services. It is part of a fundamental shift in how companies are shifting more of their business online. Azure grew 46 percent, reflecting how customers across industries are signing larger, longer deals.
Brett Iversen, the head of Microsoft’s investor relations, said that despite turmoil in the stock market, the company is focused on long-term opportunities so it can cut “through the shorter term, external noise that we don’t control as much”
Mr. Iversen said Microsoft’s Windows business was particularly strong, with sales up 25 percent as corporate customers bought new computers for their employees.
Despite chip shortages that limited the supply of the new Xbox console during the holiday season, the company’s gaming business grew 8 percent, part of its personal computing segment that grew 15 percent to $17.5 billion.
