[endorphone]

Brutus said eventually, and that's an entirely reasonable statement. Microsoft has burned many, many billions on foolish ventures to try to regain namespace, while at the same time the entirety of their revenue is still based on the coasting remains of the empire they built a decade ago. Microsoft's revenue has stagnated, despite endlessly acquiring and adding new verticals to the stack.

To put it another way, simply doing the SAP and squeezing Windows + Office would have netted a much more profitable business than everything Microsoft has been doing.

[oblio]

Azure is a new business.

[endorphone]

Azure has negligible profit (if any), and it's profoundly telling that Microsoft always hogties Azure numbers with Windows Server sales. The press remarkably buys this hook line and sinker, repeats this Intelligent Cloud prattle as if it's true.

[As an aside, Microsoft's continuing tendency to group success with losers, shuffling them around to opaque the numbers, is something that sees far less skepticism than it should. We saw this with Windows Mobile cum Phone where they tried to put on the face of success for as long as possible]

Microsoft was traditionally a very high profit margin company, and their software offerings still are. Azure might sound good to make them seem like they're still with it, but it is deadly long term (massive capital expenses, fast depreciation, and very low margins).