Microsoft’s new industry-specific clouds indicate a commitment to cloud solutions!

1)  The newcomers to Microsoft’s vertical cloud push

Continuing their expansion from their initial industry clouds, healthcare, and retail, Microsoft has unveiled three more industry clouds for financial, manufacturing, and nonprofit sectors.  This announcement, made on February 24th, indicates a public preview for these newcomers to begin in March 2021 with a preview of the financial services cloud.

Each industry cloud brings together unique services and solutions relevant to that specific industry.  Some examples of the unique features being packaged into these new industry cloud solutions include:

• For the Financial Services cloud
  • prebuilt Loan Manager
  • Banking customer engagement feature
• For the Manufacturing cloud
  • adheres to OPC Foundation standards
  • Open manufacturing platform
  • Digital Twins Consortium
• For the Nonprofit cloud
  • donor-management
  • volunteer management
  • fundraising functionality

(ZDNet)

2) Microsoft Cloud services propelling Microsoft Corp. through the second quarter

“What we have witnessed over the past year is the dawn of a second wave of digital transformation sweeping every company and every industry” Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. (Microsoft)

Microsoft’s focus on the strength of their cloud services forecasts increasing reliance on powerful cloud solutions for businesses throughout all industries and is reflected strongly in their second-quarter earnings.

• Revenue of $43.1 billion, an increase of 17%
• Operating income up 29% to $17.9 billion
• Net income springs 33% to $15.5 billion

In particular, we like to look at the growth of their commercial products and cloud services which saw an increase in revenue of 11%, and their dynamic products and cloud services revenue which saw an increase of 21%. (Microsoft)

This outlook reflects the increased value of Microsoft’s commercial and cloud solutions which we have spoken about many times in the past.  In particular, at a time that COVID-19 is still affecting the cultures and efficiencies of both large and small businesses around the world, powerful cloud and remote solutions like those provided by Microsoft continue to be a lifeline for many clients.

3) We will be leveraging these ‘industry clouds’ to the fullest for our clients

As always, our commitment to our clients will allow us to fully utilize these new Microsoft solutions including optimizing, setting up, training, and management of such services.  We are excited to be a technology partner as Microsoft unveils more powerful cloud solutions during a time when technology is likely becoming a major hurdle for many businesses out there.