Microsoft announced the appointment of Satya Nadella, whose wealth of experience included heading Microsoft's Bing search engine and Azure cloud services, as its new CEO in February 2014. After taking office, Nadella announced that "Cloud First, Mobile First" would be Microsoft's future strategy. The focus on cloud services and mobile devices enabled Microsoft to surpass market expectations in Q1 2014. According to Synergy Research Group's analysis of cloud infrastructure service revenues and market shares of major cloud service providers in Q1 2014, Microsoft saw a significant annual growth of 154% over the past year in cloud service revenues, outperforming other providers such as IBM, Sales force, and Google.
1. Maintaining price advantages by rapidly responding to competitors' price changes
2. Microsoft's key development strategies for Azure is the enhancement of open and cross-platforms and helping companies to build hybrid clouds
3. Conclusion: As Microsoft's plans for mobile and cloud computing matures, the next stage of its strategy may focus on the Internet of Things