In last quarter, I personally suggested to few friends at Microsoft stack dependent companies to migrate to Azure instead of mucking around with colo hardware, VMware, VM management, licensing etc. for external facing services. It is a change for me. Previously I used to suggest moving to Linux/open source stack to migrate to VPS providers or AWS.
They effectively raised the cost significantly for perpetual licensing/SA to push you into services agreements. Simultaneously, you get favorable terms (ie. anything other than MSRP) only if you commit long-term. Upon renewal they try to make you give up your right to transition back to perpetual licensing for Office.
So my bet is this is bullshit, shifting office dollars to O365, which include plans where you're just renting Excel.
Sure it is, I have no doubts about it's growing use. But that use is still in nascent stage so when Microsoft is reporting a sudden increase in cloud revenue is actually nothing but smart manipulation of ELA terms.
In reality Enterprise Customer aren't cloud ready . Simply running on premises virtual machines into cloud does not result in any benefits. Enterprise customers are not yet there to realize the cloud benefits like on-demand compute, containerization, resource right sizing. Though Windows 2016 might tip that balance.
It's not there yet for many since the WAN component is still too weak for many companies to migrate but when the need to remake comes up I'm seeing it in the cloud more and more, or dummy drops to the cloud. (Usb backup on premise and deliver the drive to cloud provider.)
Edit: I don't have an issue with down votes but seems like some people are angry. I just shared my experience.Can Microsoft show what is the revenue growth in absolute terms.They are including Azure credits into the Enterprise License Agreement and calling it cloud revenue. Availability of free credits does not translate into adoption necessarily. Enterprise customers are still evaluating the how costs will look like over a period of time.