Microsoft Corp. releases its fiscal 2014 second-quarter results today. On average, analysts expect Microsoft to post earnings of between $0.68 and $0.69 (U.S.) per share, a revenue of roughly $23.6-billion. That would compare to EPS of $0.76 and revenue of $21.5-billion in the same quarter a year earlier.

Judged by its share price, Microsoft has had a pretty good year.  Indeed, the stock ended last week at roughly $36 a share.  Thus, the company’s share price is roughly $10 higher than a year ago.  During that year, Microsoft launched a number of major products – including iterations of the Windows operating system and Xbox gaming console, not to mention its work in the cloud space.

Back in the 90s, I called enterprises, platforms, and people, who wallowed in Microsoft technology “Microsofty.”  These days, I’m seeing less and less of a Microsoft presence.  However, with the growth of cloud computing, will the public cloud ever be more “Microsofty?”

According to a recent InformationWeek article (by Charles Babcock), if you ask Microsoft, things are already “Microsofty.,”

“Microsoft’s Mike Neil said the Windows Azure cloud may have joined the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) competition only last April, but he said the chart of Azure IaaS growth ‘looks more like a flagpole than a hockey stick.’

“Now, Neil said Azure is adding 1,000 customers a day and Azure revenues are up 100% year over year; that includes the PaaS revenues as well as IaaS.”

I don’t see that kind of growth out there, to be honest.  However, there is a lot of interest in Microsoft and Azure.

Although Microsoft is relevant in the cloud space, I put them at a distant second or third, depending upon the analysis that you read.  They have a pretty good PaaS offering, one of the best out there now.  However, their movement to the IaaS side of things seems to be missing some of the features offered by the other IaaS players, albeit they are rushing to catch up quickly.

Of course, Microsoft is rich.  The company can buy its way into the cloud.  Microsoft Dynamics business software group is  buying  Parature, which cloud-based software companies can use to build their own self-service portals. “The software works well with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, so that makes sense.”  Count on many more of these acquisitions in 2014 and early 2015.  Small but strategic purchases that provide more value to the cloud stack.

Playing Catch-up?

Like Google and GCE, Microsoft focused on building an IaaS presence below its PaaS services.  That said, many (including myself) have criticized Microsoft for neglecting its existing PaaS services to build more Microsoft storage and compute infrastructure services to focus more on the larger IaaS space.

All things considered, I see more positives than negatives with Azure, including tightly integrated and easy-to-use database support, and a developer-friendly approach to DevOps.  The integration of services such as Jenkins, and the already built-in capabilities to support continuous development and continuous integration, put Microsoft slightly ahead of the others in terms of developer productivity.  They also have a pretty good mobile development story, with the ability to deploy on Android, iOS, and, of course, Microsoft Phone.

The jinx in the Azure armor is the fact that Microsoft already has a huge developer base.  Thus, they have to maintain loyalty to that group, and support existing approaches and technologies.  While that seems like a positive, it’s much easier to take the approach of AWS, or other startups, that are not bound by legacy developers and users.  Thus, Microsoft is in the same camp as IBM, Oracle, and HP, companies that have to consider their legacy install base when defining the next generation of their technology.

New Leadership?

Of course, the issue around the search for the new CEO is something that will most effect the Microsoft cloud strategy.  Indeed, it’s the number one reason that reporters call me these days, and the search is becoming way more dramatic than it needs to be.

Now that the Ford CEO is out of the running, it appears to be who’s who in good internal candidates.  The way I see it is that, if they hire a traditional CEO who will want to talk about margins and earnings per share, and not technology, they are sunk.  However, if they hire somebody who’s an innovative change agent, either from inside or outside of the company, Microsoft has a chance to get more into the cloud computing game, as well as succeed with other parts of the business.

What’s missing at Microsoft is a sense that they are leading again.  In other words, they need to become more innovative and creative, which are really the roots of Microsoft.  They seem to have lost that direction again.  However, they still have the resources and the opportunity to become more relevant than they are right now.  Microsoft needs to be more of an innovator and a leader in the cloud computing space.