Microsoft operates Azure, the cloud-computing platform that helped it become a major market-capitalization leader.
Microsoft Azure provides computing, storage, databases, networking, analytics, and artificial-intelligence services over the internet. Microsoft launched Azure commercially in 2010, initially under the name Windows Azure.
Azure became a central part of Microsoft’s business alongside Windows, Office, gaming, and enterprise software. Its growth helped Microsoft shift from being viewed mainly as a personal-computer software company toward a broad cloud and platform provider.
Amazon Web Services is a different cloud platform and is operated by Amazon. Google Cloud is operated by Alphabet. These businesses are often compared because cloud infrastructure is a major technology market, but their corporate owners are separate companies with distinct stock-market valuations.