Microsoft Office 365: a pure cloud business?
The analysts are also critical of Microsoft's cloud numbers.
The group primarily includes Office 365 , Azure and Dynamics in its
"commercial cloud" business CRM. In the "update" for the
first quarter of fiscal year 2016 (end: September 30, 2015) Microsoft reported
projected annual cloud revenues (run rate) of more than $ 8.2 billion.
Gartner points out that Office 365 sales could of course
also include income from classic desktop or suites for other devices that have
nothing to do with cloud usage. Microsoft does not break the numbers down
further publicly.
Oracle: Hardware Leasing as Cloud
Revenue?
The database giant Oracle is apparently particularly
creative when it comes to reporting cloud sales . If the Gartner report is to
be believed, the Ellison Company has found a way to even declare hardware
leasing businesses as cloud sales.
Mentioned in the Financial Report for the second fiscal
quarter of 2016 OracleProjected annual SaaS and PaaS product sales of $ 2.6
billion. On a quarterly basis, total cloud sales grew 26 percent year-on-year
to $ 649 million. That includes $ 165 million for IaaS and $ 484 million for
SaaS and PaaS.
The group uses the term IaaS in many different forms, the
analysts complain: "Some services are actually IaaS, others can be better
described as managed hosting; in some cases it is simply about on-premise
leasing Hardware."
Oracle also likes to use classic "subscription"
revenues as a synonym for cloud revenues. In addition, the Gartner analysts
report on deals in which maintenance and other services were unceremoniously
declared as cloud sales. Regardless of this, at Oracle, too, all signs point to
the cloud. For the second fiscal area of 2016, the group reported declines in
all non-cloud-related business areas.
SAP and the cloud: a matter of
definition
The situation is anything but transparent in SAP's figures.
The Walldorf-based company particularly emphasizes SAP S / 4 HANA in the cloud
context . Like other traditional IT providers, SAP is emphasizing the
"hybrid character" of its software products in order to strengthen
its position in the SaaS business. In its annual report for the third quarter
of 2015, SAP cites an impressive annual revenue growth rate of 116 percent (90
percent adjusted for currency effects) for the area of "Cloud
Subscriptions and Support". In this way, 600 million euros would flow into
the coffers every quarter. Almost 174 million euros came from the acquisition
of the cloud provider Concur, which specializes in travel expenses.
At the Sapphire customer conference in May, SAP announced a
cooperation with Microsoft. Both manufacturers want to support SAP's in-memory
platform HANA on Microsoft's Azure cloud infrastructure in the future.
Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella said: "Together with SAP we are creating a
new level of integration within our products."