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Microsoft highlights some big numbers when it tells the story of its growing cloud offerings. Analysts say the level of the company’s investment in those operations is eye-catching.
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Eighty percent of Fortune 500 companies use Microsoft’s cloud, said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise division.

The company is adding 10,000 customers a week to Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform. Revenue from Microsoft’s cloud offerings more than doubled last fiscal year, with an annual revenue run rate now up to $4.4 billion.

“The thing that took me by surprise a little was just the level of investment they’re making. It’s huge,” said Al Hilwa, an analyst with research firm IDC. “It appears that Microsoft is investing in Azure at a scale that few others are able to match. It is definitely early days, but 19 regions made up of the type of building templates that Azure uses is a blowout metric for the cloud industry at this time.”

So aggressive has Microsoft been in its cloud aspirations that financial analyst Rick Sherlund with investment bank Nomura said in a note to investors last month that, taking SaaS, PaaS and IaaS altogether, “Microsoft is likely to be the largest cloud vendor by the December quarter and growing the fastest of the leading players.”