There's little doubt that buy microsoft office 2013 Azure has been on the tear, growing 120% year-over-year in the last quarter and mounting the only real credible competition for Amazon Web Services. That's the good news.

The bad news is that this might be costing Microsoft when it comes to its profitability.

As noted by Steve Nellis, Microsoft's continued success with Azure could result in income which are "a lot less than what Microsoft's investors happen to be used to within the last many years." Microsoft doesn't really have a choice, but the transition is going to be painful, the same.

Microsoft is really a gargantuan cash machine, generating vast amounts of dollars in profit each quarter from the Windows and Office businesses. Anyone who has worked for a software company having a commanding lead inside a given segment recognizes that these profits can persist for years, even as new license revenue fades.

Usually, this license revenue gets gobbled up by new competitors. When it comes to Microsoft, however, it's been cannibalizing itself. To its credit, Microsoft has begun rivaling its tried-and-true Office and buy microsoft office 2010 businesses, introducing cloud-based alternatives and separating its reporting into three groups (Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and much more Personal Computing) to assist shield these burgeoning businesses from a few of the harsh glare of Wall Street's eye.

"Intelligent Cloud" includes microsoft office 2013 professional successful Azure platform revenue, but it also includes older (and incredibly profitable) server tool businesses. Burying Azure in the midst of more profitable products is crucial for giving Azure some space as it grows in strength, but it hasn't stopped Microsoft's overall profitability from declining. Consistently. For years.