Azure vs AWS: The first time we get to truly compare these cloud giants

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy

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• Microsoft reveals a pure Azure revenue number for the first time.
• This lets us properly compare Azure with AWS, the top 2 cloud providers.
• Here are the big takeaways from this important new disclosure.

This week, Microsoft reported a pure revenue number for its most important business for the first time ever.

It's wild to write that. Azure is Microsoft's cloud unit, which rents computing capacity over the internet.