San Francisco — Microsoft on Thursday reported that its quarterly earnings were lifted due to its shift to focusing on computing services hosted in the internet cloud. The US technology giant said it made a profit of $6.5bn in the recently ended quarter as revenue rose to $23.3bn. Microsoft shares — which closed the official trading day at a new record high of $74.22 — leapt after the release of the earnings figures, only to come back down and even slip a bit in after-market trade to $73.65. About $7.4bn of the revenue in the quarter came from "intelligent cloud" offerings that are part of Microsoft shedding its legacy of packaged software and embracing a future in which computing power is hosted online as a service. "Innovation across our cloud platforms drove strong results this quarter," Microsoft CE Satya Nadella said in a statement. Microsoft uses the term "intelligent cloud" to refer to services that let businesses take advantage of computing power online in its data centres, ...
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