Source – investopedia.com

Typically, Azure services are used in public clouds. The market for hybrid cloud, as the technology combining the public cloud with on-premises deployment is called, is expected to reach $91.74 billion in revenue by 2021. Google recently announced a similar partnership with Nutanix, a company that specializes in hyper-converged platforms that combine the public cloud with on-premise solutions.

In Microsoft’s case, the company has laid off thousands of workers as it refocuses its business, which mainly consists of on-premise applications such as Microsoft Office, toward the cloud.

by a wide margin in the cloud sweepstakes.  However, the popularity of Microsoft’s Office suite of products could help the company steal a march over rivals in the coming years. Along with releasing One Azure for its cloud stack, the company released One Microsoft, a suite of cloud-based productivity services for its customers.

Analysts have also begun taking note. In a report released earlier this year, Ivan Feinseth from Tigress Financial Partners wrote that Microsoft’s “expanding cloud transition strategy including Azure, the subscription-based Office 365 model and the future integration with LinkedIn along with new initiatives in artificial intelligence (AI), search, gaming and other new products will begin to drive a new acceleration in business performance.”