Microsoft's cloud business just keeps growing
If there's one major takeaway from Microsoft's earnings reports over the last few years, it's this: The cloud is everything for Microsoft. And, based on the company's financials for the second quarter of 2018 , its success in the cloud doesn't appear to be slowing down anytime soon. Microsoft reported a 12 percent revenue jump for the period, reaching $28.9 billion up from $25.8 billion a year ago. And mostly, that growth was driven by the company's investments in cloud services. The "Productivity and Business Processes" group, which includes Office 365 and its cloud apps, saw its revenues increase by 25 percent. Azure revenue jumped by 98 percent, leading to a 15 percent increase for Microsoft's "Intelligent Cloud" group. That more than makes up for the relative stagnant 2 percent growth in the "Personal Computing" segment, which includes Windows, Xbox, Bing and Surface. It's particularly surprising that Surface revenue...