Microsoft’s Cloud Business Is Closing In on Amazon Web Services, Analyst Says

Photograph by Mark Kauzlarich/Bloomberg

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Microsoft stock’s (ticker: MSFT) ongoing flirtation with a $1 trillion market valuation was aided greatly last week by the software giant’s Build conference with developers, and what it had to say about its Azure cloud-computing platform.

“Azure continues to make meaningful strides closing the functionality and usability gap with [ Amazon.com (AMZN) Web Services],” Stifel analyst Brad Reback wrote in a note Sunday. “In fact, these same individuals [Microsoft developers] reinforced the idea that Azure’s hybrid capabilities remain far ahead of AWS.”