Microsoft: Credit Suisse Tech Conference call, stock moves slightly lower
- Says is better positioned now in the cloud than last year
- Most immediate opportunity to grow in business
- Cloud market is exceeding MSFT's expectations for growth
- Over time, expects to continue to see improvement in cloud gross margins
- Bets on Azure from a few years ago are starting to pay off
- Reiterates on-prem products still growing alongside IaaS, PaaS and SaaS products -- states customers aren't willing to cast aside server and storage already invested in
- Feels hybrid approach (cloud/on-prem) will be viable for some time
- Reiterates will not lose a deal based on price as it relates to cloud/hybrid offerings (according to CFO Dave O'Hara, price match comments made earlier)
- Cost of building out cloud (catching up to AWS, which was launched before Azure) not totally behind MSFT; starting to flatten out, seeing better scale and better engineering investment utilization
- Not focused on maximizing price, more focused on maximizing share
- Feels AI may be a "deep pocket" race; still in the first inning of AI
- Comments on Microsoft Teams, use with Slack