It’s become a familiar story now. The cloud segment of Microsoft is growing at astronomical rates and is pushing the earnings and profits of Microsoft to new levels. But, what is interesting is that the margin of growth grows with every quarter.

According to the earnings report released by Microsoft, earnings from Azure almost doubled, thereby accounting for a year-on-year growth of 90 percent. Though the company doesn’t break down the revenues of Azure separately, an estimate by the analysis firm Canalys, pegs it at a whopping $2 billion.

Revenue from the intelligent cloud business segment rose 14 percent to $6.92 billion. This was higher than analysts’s expectations, which was $6.7 billion. Surprisingly, Satya Nadella kept a target of $20 billion for the cloud business by 2018 and in this quarter itself, it surpassed the target as the total revenue was $20.4 billion. This goes to show that Microsoft is doing great under the able leadership of Satya Nadella.

Cloud was the lifeline that Microsoft was looking for almost a decade now, and it has made the most of it. At a time, when PC sales were plummeting and the company was looking for some direction, the emergence of cloud and the change of leadership to Satya Nadella, both seemed to have weaved the magic again for Microsoft.

One of the highlights of this quarter was the deal that Costco, an Azure customer. In fact, this came along the heels of a deal with Whole Foods that brought it under the Microsoft umbrella.

While this quarter spells good news for Microsoft, it can’t afford to relax. AWS is growing at a much higher rate. It raked in $4.6 billion this quarter, representing an almost 46 percent year-on-year growth.  Though AWS missed out on Costco this quarter, it still managed to secure deals with a ton of big names such as Hulu and General Electric.

Other than AWS, Google is also fast catching up with Microsoft. It entered deals with retailers like Kohl’s and payment processing companies like PayPal. ALl this means, Microsoft needs to amp up its efforts to stay ahead of competition.

In other results, revenue from Microsoft’s cloud computing division fell by 0.2 percent to $9.38 billion. Nevertheless, it beat the analysts expectations at $8.81 billion. This quarter also saw an increase in revenue from Surface. In fact, after two consecutive quarters of declines, it saw an increase of 12 percent in revenue.

Such positive results was welcomed by its investors and the share market as a whole. The value of Microsoft’s shares increased by 3.1 percent to end at $81.20.

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Azure certifications give you an in-depth knowledge about the Azure platform, so you can become an expert in it. As you know, Azure is one of the best cloud computing platforms available today, so knowing more about this platform can open up a world of opportunities for you.

You may wonder why you need a certification in the first place? Isn’t deep knowledge that you can learn by yourself good enough?

The answer is an overwhelming no for many reasons. Firstly, certifications tell the world you’re an expert in Azure. Imagine you’re walking into a CEO’s room to convince him of your knowledge. Though you’ll have to answer your questions and show your profound knowledge in the subject, a certification can help you start off on a positive note. It creates an impression that you’re well-versed in Azure and this mindset will reflect in the way your interview is conducted or your chances for landing the job you’ve always wanted.

Besides telling the world that you’re an expert, it makes you a more confident person. The materials you’ve learned tend to come from authentic sources, so at the end of the course, you can rest assured that you’re truly an expert in this field.

Now that we’ve talked about the need for certifications, let’s look at some of the choices you have. In this piece, we’ll talk about some of the lesser-known certifications that teach you everything about Azure and at the same time, gives a great value for your money.

Microsoft Azure fundamentals

This course talks about the basics of cloud computing and how it fits well into the Azure platform. This is the perfect course for anyone starting off with cloud computing.

Through this course, you’ll learn about virtual machines, SQL databases, web apps, and other relevant technologies. This course is recommended for more advanced courses like MCSA: cloud platform certification.

Cloud data science with Azure machine learning

This is an interesting course that delves deep into Azure machine learning, how it works, how you can use it and more. This is a relatively recent course that’s based on Microsoft’s Ignite conference where Microsoft introduced a slew of machine learning capabilities for Azure, and this course covers them all for you.

Configuring and operating a hybrid cloud with Microsoft Azure stack

Microsoft has introduced something called Azure Stack that allows developers to run mirror images of Azure in their own premises. To help everyone understand how you can work on this extension, Microsoft has also designed this course. It is most ideal for cloud architects, DevOps and service administrators who would be using Azure stack to provide cloud services.

Linux on Azure

Linus and Microsoft have finally found common ground. Surprising, more than 20 percent of Azure are Linux, so it makes sense to have a course dedicated for this operating system.

Each of these courses give you a new insight into how Azure works. Let us know which look more promising to you in our comments section.

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For years now, cloud security has been a major deterrent for many companies to join the cloud bandwagon. This is an Achilles heel for cloud service providers too, as they spend billions of dollar each year on cloud and cybersecurity. One of the aspects that could possible ease this fear and spending is encryption and other data security strategies, and Microsoft is leading the way with a new product called Azure confidential computing.

Microsoft Azure is the first cloud provider to offer a collection of security capabilities and securities under Azure confidential computing. This product’s features is expected to fill in the gaps that are present in public cloud security today.

Azure confidential computing ensures that the data that has to be processed is protected inside an enclave called Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). This is an important step because if you look at past data breaches, you’ll notice that malicious intruders use administrative privileges to access data only when it is being processed. These TEEs ensure that no one can view the data or the operations that happen on it, so outside access or breach is impossible.

Microsoft goes one step further too. If it detects any change in the code, all operations are denied and the environment is instantly disabled. This mechanism is necessary to ensure that  hackers don’t use any malware or bugs to exploit the system.

All this functionality is offered to developers through the Azure confidentiality computing platform that runs on top of Intel’s Software Guard Extension (SGX) technology. With this, Azure is the first to offer SGX-capable servers in the public cloud sphere. Customers who’re enrolled in Microsoft’s Early Access program can now develop applications on this confidential computing platform.

This discussion can get you wondering about SGX. What is this and how does it help with cloud security?

Intel’s SGX is the latest technology from Intel that allows developers to protect selected code and data from disclosure or modifications. It uses different protection mechanisms to ensure that the data and code are protected even when the system that’s using it, is running. In other words, the application that’s using this selected code and data is protecting it not just from other applications running on the system, but also from the system’s own operating system, Hyper-V and even Intel’s management engine. So, it becomes almost impossible for anyone to reach this code or data.

Given these high levels of security, we can soon expect Azure confidential computing to be adopted across different organizations, particularly in the finance, healthcare, government, and artificial intelligence sectors. In oil and gas and IoT industries too, this platform can be used to protect the intellectual property of the company, regardless of which application or organization is generating and using the derived data.

In all, this is an exciting product that could pave the way for wider cloud adoption, so everyone gets to make the most of the benefits that come from cloud computing.

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In a bid to expand its presence in Europe, Microsoft has embarked on a strategy to reach out to European software companies.

As a first step, Microsoft has created a program called “Microsoft for Startups” accelerator and this program will be based out of Berlin. Under this program, Microsoft plans to have a four-month program for startup software companies in Europe, and at the end of this program, $500,000 worth of Azure credits will be given to the best performers. Besides Azure credits, these chosen companies will also get access to outside investors, technical advisers, and inputs from the Microsoft sales team.

From a startup’s perspective, this can be a great opportunity to expand and learn under the proper guidance of an established tech company, while for Microsoft, it is a great strategy to expand its presence and customer base within the European Union. The idea is to catch these companies young and get them hooked on Azure, so when they grow, the use of Azure will also increase. Also, Microsoft believes with such a strategy, it can capitalize on the success of these startups in the future.

That said, Microsoft has laid down certain conditions on which companies can qualify for this course. First off, these companies should be headquartered within the EU and a substantial part of their operations should be geared for the European market. These startups should operate only in the areas of connected factories, connected vehicles, AI, blockchain databases and computer vision.

In addition, these companies should have raised early stage funding and should have at least a functioning prototype of their product. In other words, this program is not for startups, but for those companies that have reached a certain stage of operations and want a boost or accelerator to take their company forward.

By tapping into the startups, Microsoft wants to establish itself as the leader in Europe. But that’s not going to be easy, as similar programs have been rolled by its competitors such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google. In fact, Amazon’s AWS Activate Portfolio and Portfolio Plus packages reach out to startups that are in the acceleration and incubating stage and offer them anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000 in AWS credit, along with technical help. Likewise, Alphabet’s Google Cloud Platform for Startup Program gives credits to use the Google Cloud Platform, besides technical and marketing help.

Both these programs from AWS and Google are available for European startups too.

In the light of this situation, how does Microsoft plan to achieve its goals? Well, for starters, it’s offering way more than what other cloud companies offer in terms of credit worth. This alone should be a deciding factor. Secondly, it’s ensuring that the money is used only for the brightest of prospects that have the highest chances of success, so this way Microsoft is associating itself only with the best startups.

Maybe both these aspects can give it a lead, but it’s definitely hard to say at this point in time.

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