From Amazon Towards Microsoft — Why 'Tide Is Shifting In The Cloud Arms Race'

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) is poised to chip away further market share from Amazon.com, Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) cloud subsidiary Amazon Web Services, according to Wedbush Securities.

The Microsoft Analyst: Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives maintained his Outperform rating and $300 price target on the Satya Nadella-led tech giant.

The Microsoft Thesis: Ives said, based on Wedbush’s “recent field checks” for the March quarter, the investment firm strongly believes that the “tide is shifting in the cloud arms race” in favor of Microsoft taking into account recent 50% Azure growth number compared to the 28% YoY growth that AWS registered in the past quarter.

Wedbush estimates Microsoft is still only penetrating approximately 35% of its unparalleled installed base on cloud transition.

A catalyst in favor of Microsoft is the current work from home environment, as per Wedbush.

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“In many cases we are seeing enterprises accelerate their digital transformation (larger deals) and cloud strategy with Microsoft by 6 to 12 months as the prospects of a semi-remote workforce for the foreseeable future looks here to stay,” wrote Ives.

Azure’s cloud base is buoyed by Microsoft’s massive installed base and Office 365 transition for both consumer and enterprise.

See Also: Amazon, Microsoft 'Cloud Arms Race Hitting Another Gear' With Bezos Replacement: Wedbush

The analyst pointed out that 85-90% of these cloud deployments have already been “green lighted” by chief information officers and “healthy cloud budgets already in place for 2021, with Redmond firmly positioned to gain more market share vs. AWS in this cloud arms race.”

The shift towards cloud is likely to accelerate from 35% today to 44% by the end of 2021 and 55% by 2022, according to Wedbush.

Wedbush estimates that this shift will translate into global cloud spending approaching the $1 trillion mark over the next decade akin to a “golden cloud pie.”

Other gainers in the cloud race include Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG) subsidiary Google and International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE: IBM).

Price Action: Microsoft shares closed 0.4% lower at $234.81 on Monday and fell 0.13% in the after-hours session. On the same day, Amazon shares closed 0.25% lower at $3,081.68 and fell 0.12% in after-hours trading.