Amazon Web Services (AWS), the public cloud leader, continued its upward trend on Thursday with the publication of Amazon.com’s third quarter financial report.
AWS exceeded Wall Street’s expectations in the quarter that ended Sept. 30 with $3.2 billion in revenue. This is the highest AWS has earned since Amazon.com separated its cloud business from other line items.
AWS’ Q3 revenue grew by almost 55% over the same period last years and by 12% over the quarter before, when it earned $2.9B.
Although AWS was only a tenth in Amazon.com’s third-quarter earnings, its annual growth rate is greater than that of Amazon.com’s other business segments. The North America unit saw a 26% increase in revenue year-over year, while the International unit saw a 28% increase in revenue year-over year for $10.6 billion.
AWS’s operating income was $861 million. This is a 106% increase year-over-year, and nearly 20% sequentially.
Amazon.com highlighted its fiscal third quarter highlights by pointing out the hybrid-cloud partnership between VMware, AWS, and the launch of a new region in Ohio as key contributors to its growth.
Microsoft’s Azure platform, which is AWS closest competitor in the public cloud space (if not far away), generated $6.4 billion in revenue during its most recent quarterly earnings reports. This figure does not include other Microsoft cloud properties such as Dynamics and Office 365 productivity suites.
Microsoft reported that Azure usage doubled year over year, which led to an 116% increase in revenue. However, they did not give specific dollar figures.
Amazon.com, the parent company, was on target with analyst expectations at $32.7 Billion, an increase of 29% year-overyear. However, the earnings per share of Amazon.com, $0.52, was below analyst expectations of $0.78. Net income was $252million, compared with estimates of $386million.