Cloud computing drives growth for big US tech firms

Amazon Web Services is still delivering far more revenue than any of its peers

Amazon.com, Microsoft, Alphabet’s Google and Intel are all putting their chips on the cloud computing business, and it is booming.

All four companies posted stellar quarterly earnings on Thursday, showing the strength of the shift in corporate computing away from company-owned data centers and to the cloud.

Microsoft’s Azure business nearly doubled, with year-over-year growth of 90 per cent. The company does not break out revenue figures for Azure, but research firm Canalys estimates it generated $2 billion for Microsoft.

“The move to the cloud was one we felt Microsoft could always benefit from, and they’re showing us that they can,” said Kim