Recently, retail giants, Walmart and Walgreens, have signed deals for Microsoft cloud offerings including Azure and O365. Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella hinted that the most recent wave of customer wins for the Azure cloud platform is due to Amazon's push into the grocery and health care industry.

Despite Amazon holding the title as the leader in public cloud infrastructure, Microsoft's Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program has been key to the growth of Microsoft's cloud infrastructure.

Our CSP business has been growing very rapidly, I don't think we're an anomaly. I think customers are ready, and I think Microsoft has done a good job of making sure CSP is an acceptable transaction model. We're seeing great success in our CSP growth in Azure, as well as in the 'modern workplace' area.

-Ric Opal, BDO Digital

Microsoft's personal computing segment also saw some growth at $12.99 billion in revenue compared to the $12.17 billion during the same period, last year.

Nobody has a solution like they have when it comes to holistic security from the desktop to the data center, and subsequently to the cloud. It's just second to none.

-Ric Opal, BDO Digital

To view the full article from CRN, visit Microsoft CEO Nadella Suggests Some Customers Favor Azure Because Of Amazon's Push Into New Industries.