Posted on 01/30/2020 8:47:37 AM PST by Alas Babylon!
Late Wednesday, Microsoft (ticker: MSFT) reported financial results that handily beat Wall Street expectations. The company posted adjusted fiscal second-quarter earnings per share of $1.51, above the $1.32 Wall Street consensus. Revenue of $36.9 billion beat estimates of $35.7 billion. On Thursday, Bernstein analyst Mark Moerdler reaffirmed his Outperform rating for Microsoft shares, citing the company’s stellar earnings report. He also raised his price target for the stock to $203 from $174. “This was again another strong quarter as Microsoft continues to deliver Commercial Cloud growth as well as growth in numerous other areas,” he wrote. “The cloud story continues to be very strong...probably surprising many investors.” Microsoft stock can still go higher because of the strong growth in its cloud-computing business, according to Bernstein.
(Excerpt) Read more at barrons.com ...
I think the MS 365 service based around the MS Onedrive cloud is a great deal for small business and firms. I use it on my Apple ipad and phone on a daily (actually, hourly) basis. This in addition to my MS desktop powerstation.
“The Cloud” = your stuff in someone else’s box
90% of the time, no thanks.
Yeah, Azure is kicking butt these days. Glad to see some real competition to Amazon and Google.
"Hey, here, lemme hold your data for you...."
Your computer connected to the Internet = Your box and stuff accessible by somebody on the other end.
It’s all fun and games until Microsoft arbitrarily and without notice completely terminates your account because it scanned material some Indian in Calcutta or whatever thought was offensive. Happens all the time and there’s no way to recover your data. I know a criminal defense firm where this in fact happened based on Microsoft’s inability to understand the context of data transmitted by the State as part of discovery in a criminal defense trial.
If one is running with their shields down or nonexistent, perhaps.
While it may make sense for some people/organizations, and while this humble surfer doesn't have anything worth the effort of hacking, the whole cloud concept has nevertheless always struck me as perilous/shady.
/.02
Bump. Anybody using the cloud for serious stuff had better come up with the big bucks to buy some serious security.
No cloud for me, thanks.
Internet = stuff in the cloud.
Even a humble surfer is already there.
I work with business customers. Totally different. There are many layers of security involved, and the cloud is not anymore risky than any other connected enterprise.
When your customer or partners are online, then it makes sense to run in the cloud (meaning, you business is ALREADY on the Internet), because a single point of failure at your business on premises location can stop it entirely. A business using assets in the cloud does so for this very point—no single point of failure—you pay the cloud provider to give you redundancy and survivability.
I would say humble surfers shouldn’t need the cloud—except if your backing up to the cloud, which is very mch a good idea.
(ps: if I were king, malicious hackers would be hanged ;-)
I’ve always advocated hackers be drug out into the street and shot, and their carcass be left there and run over by 18 wheelers as a reminder to any other potential hackers/spammers/crackers/cyber thieves.
Your data is stored on a disk drive on your computer in your house. Your computer is connected to a wired hub which is connected by TCP/IP to the Internet from a broadband pipe from your ISP.
Your data is stored on a disk drive in Microsoft’s cloud, which is connected via TCPIP through Microsoft itself as the ISP.
Which data is safer? The common factor is the data is stored on a drive on a system that has connectivity to the Internet.
One is run by you and your ISP.
The other by a multi-billion dollar company that spends millions on security and is CONSTANTLY monitoring all of their connectivity in real time.
The aggregate power to provide compute, storage and networking is the same aggregate power to provide security.
When you understand this, and know how the Azure cloud works and is secured, you would not have those concerns.
Because billion dollar companies can be trusted with your information and content, because they spend so much on (their own) security? No thanks.
It’s not about who you can trust or not.
My point is everyone acts like the cloud is some new thing. It is not. In the end, we’re all connected. If you cannot trust someone else, you need to disconnect, because any connection is only a matter of one hack away.
But yes, a rich company can provide better security for me than I can alone. It’s a matter of what I’m willing to pay. You get what you pay for.
People trust the Internet but not the cloud. That does not compute.
Good points! In the old days I worked for a computer timesharing outfit. Back then the selling point was the expense of having and maintaining your own computer. Much cheaper to share time on ours and save the expense and labor of having your own.
Today, I’m a contrarian and I want to control what’s happening on my computer. That’s the main reason I’ve stayed with Win 7. Going to Win 10 means giving up control to MSFT and that ain’t gonna happen.
I guess Bill Gates made another billion today.
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