Microsoft’s $32 Billion Q2 Earnings were Inspired and Powered by Partners

Microsoft's Revenue Highlights

• Microsoft's gaming revenue was up 8% year over year during the second quarter, with revenue from Xbox software and services rising 31% over that same period.


• Surface "had its biggest quarter ever this holiday, delivering strong double-digit growth in both consumer and commercial" according to CEO Satya Nadella


• Microsoft Cloud growth exploded as commercial cloud revenue was up 48% year over year, anchored by Azure revenue growth of 76%.

Microsoft's Earnings by the Numbers

• Earnings of $1.08 a share


• Revenues of $32.5 billion


• Intelligent-cloud revenue of $9.38 billion

$32 billion in revenue. That’s an incredible number that Satya Nadella and Amy Hood shared during the Q2 earnings call last week. Just as impressive is the commercial cloud revenue increase of 48 percent year-over-year to $9 billion. Did you know that 95 percent of Microsoft’s commercial revenue flows directly through our partner ecosystem? With more than 7,500 partners joining that ecosystem every month, partner growth and partner innovation are directly fueling our commercial cloud growth. One accelerant, the IP co-sell program, now has thousands of co-sell ready partners that generated an incredible $8 billion in contracted partner revenue since the program began in July 2017.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. And we know that partners make more possible. As a customer-first, partner-led company, we start with the needs of our customers and work with our partners to deliver the best outcomes for each organization. We look forward to continued evolution in the Microsoft-partner relationship this year—with more innovation in AI, more co-selling opportunities, and more ways to connect partners to customers and to other partners through Azure Marketplace and AppSource. I invite you to learn more about how Microsoft leaders from the Azure, Dynamics, and ISV teams are supporting our partners, and how partners can capitalize on the opportunities ahead.

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Introducing Background Blur in Skype

Background blur in Skype is similar to background blur in Microsoft Teams. It takes the stress out of turning on your video and puts the focus where it belongs—on you! With a simple toggle, right-click, or even through your Skype settings, your background will be instantly and subtly blurred, leaving just you as the only focal point.

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Building AI on trust: A dialogue around Microsoft’s core values and principles

Çağlayan Arkan sits down with Nick Tsilas, senior attorney for Manufacturing & Growth Industries, to discuss the potential of AI to help Microsoft build a better, more responsible, more sustainable world.

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• Microsoft Research Webinar: Machine Learning and Fairness with Jenn Wortman Vaughan and Hanna Wallach


• Exploring ethics and trust in AI with Microsoft

AI Design Principles

• Fairness


• Inclusive


• Reliability


• Transparency


• Privacy and Security


• Accountability

Guidelines for human-AI interaction design

The variability of current AI designs as well as high-profile reports of failures – ranging from the humorous, embarrassing or disruptive (for example, benign autocorrect errors) to the more serious, when users cannot effectively understand or control an AI system, (for example, accidents in semi-autonomous vehicles) – highlight opportunities for creating more intuitive and effective user experiences with AI. The ongoing conversation on human-centered design for AI systems shows that designers are hungry for trustworthy AI-centric design heuristics or guidelines.

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DataSense for Microsoft Education’s Family of Products

One of Microsoft’s oldest and biggest verticals for its Azure cloud business has been education, and today it announced an acquisition that it hopes will help it deepen its reach: it has acquired DataSense — a data management platform that can be used to collect, integrate and report information from across a range of online education applications and services — from an educational technology company called BrightBytes, to integrate the functionality into Azure.

DataSense is a master platform that’s used by schools and educational authorities both to ingest information as well as report it to state and other authorities, covering disparate applications and other data sources. Even before being acquired by Microsoft, it already had a lot of reach, currently being used to manage data for millions of students in the U.S., BrightBytes says. The Microsoft acquisition should supercharge its growth.

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Keeping Kids Safe in a Digital World With Windows 10 and Xbox Family Settings

Take advantage of free, built-in features in the devices you use. Go to account.microsoft.com and set up a Microsoft account to take advantage of all the great family settings across Windows, Xbox, Microsoft Launcher for Android, and the web. Family settings are a free set of features that span devices and can help you set guardrails that work for your family – manage screen time, set permissions for games or apps purchases, enable safe browsing on the web, and more.

Have an open dialog with your children about expectations and appropriate digital behavior. While there are tons of tools and apps available to track your child’s behavior or monitor their every move, there is a lot to be said for using digital time as a learning opportunity. 

Set a good example. Just like our kids wanted to cook or vacuum like us when they were small, they are still looking to us as their example as they get older. The best way to teach our kids about responsible digital habits and online safety is to demonstrate good behaviors ourselves.

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• Visit microsoft.com/family for more information and tips


• Microsoft Launcher for Android

Applied F# Challenge

The Applied F# Challenge is a new initiative to encourage in-depth educational submissions to reveal more of the interesting, unique, and advanced applications of F#.

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Azure Data Studio – Setting up your environment

Azure Data Studio is a cross-platform database tool for data professionals using the Microsoft family of on-premises and cloud data platforms on Windows, MacOS, and Linux.

Previously released under the preview name SQL Operations Studio, Azure Data Studio offers a modern editor experience with Intellisense, code snippets, source control integration, and an integrated terminal. It is engineered with the data platform user in mind, with built in charting of query result sets and customizable dashboards.

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• Download and Install Azure Data Studio

Microsoft Azure

Sign up for 12 months of popular free services and a $200 credit to explore any Azure service for 30 days, or work with the 25+ services that are always free. With your free account, you can also test and deploy enterprise apps, create custom mobile experiences, and gain insights from your data.

• How to sign-up for an Azure free account

Introducing Xbox Game Studios

Microsoft has rebranded Microsoft Studios to Xbox Game Studios, saying that Xbox has gone beyond a console and is now a full gaming platform. Xbox Game Studios is made up of 13 distinct game development teams responsible for beloved franchises like Age of Empires, Forza, Gears of War, Halo and Minecraft. The teams at 343 Industries, The Coalition, Compulsion Games, The Initiative, inXile Entertainment, Minecraft, Ninja Theory, Obsidian Entertainment, Playground Games, Rare, Turn 10 Studios, Undead Labs and our Global Publishing group are working hard to deliver incredible exclusives, original IP an