This article is based on a piece originally published at moneyandmarkets.com in April 2020. All financial figures — market capitalizations, share prices, valuation multiples, and dividend yields — reflect conditions as of early April 2020 and are presented for historical context only. They are not current and should not be used as the basis for any investment decision today.
Why Cloud Computing Attracted Investor Attention in 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of workers out of offices and into home setups almost overnight. As enterprises scrambled to keep operations running, demand for cloud-based infrastructure, collaboration tools, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms accelerated sharply. For investors watching these trends in early 2020, cloud computing companies stood out as a sector positioned to grow even amid broader market turmoil.
Cloud computing, for the purposes of this discussion, covers companies that use remote data centers to process and deliver business workloads over the internet — including compute, storage, networking, application development, and artificial intelligence services.
1. Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT)
- Market Capitalization (early April 2020): ~$1.2 trillion
- Annual Sales (fiscal year 2019): ~$125 billion
- Annual Dividend Yield: ~1.27%
Microsoft’s cloud platform, Azure, is one of the largest and most feature-rich cloud infrastructures in the world. Azure enables businesses to build, test, deploy, and manage applications and services through Microsoft-managed data centers distributed globally. Its offerings span compute, databases, AI and machine learning, DevOps tooling, and security services.
In the early weeks of widespread remote work adoption, Microsoft reported a dramatic spike in Azure usage. The company cited a 775% increase in cloud services consumption in regions that had implemented social distancing measures — a figure attributed to the original moneyandmarkets.com source and not independently verified here.
Microsoft’s share price declined alongside the broader market in the February–March 2020 sell-off, falling to a low around $135 before rebounding close to 20% within weeks. Its valuation metrics at the time — a price-to-earnings ratio of approximately 27.9, price-to-sales of 9.1, and price-to-book of 11.1 — were considered reasonable given the company’s scale, recurring revenue model, and cloud growth trajectory.
For DevOps engineers, Microsoft Azure is particularly relevant: it provides deep integrations with GitHub (which Microsoft owns), Azure DevOps pipelines, container services via Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), and a broad partner ecosystem. The platform’s growth during the pandemic underscored how central cloud infrastructure had become to business continuity planning.
2. Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN)
- Market Capitalization (early April 2020): ~$977 billion
- Annual Sales (fiscal year 2019): ~$280 billion
- Annual Dividend Yield: 0.00%
While Amazon is broadly recognized for its e-commerce marketplace, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the company’s most profitable business segment and the world’s leading public cloud provider by market share. As of early 2020, AWS offered more than 175 services — spanning compute (EC2), object storage (S3), container orchestration (ECS/EKS), machine learning (SageMaker), and dozens of managed database and networking options.
According to the original source, AWS operated across 70 availability zones in 22 geographic regions worldwide at the time of writing. These figures have continued to grow; readers should consult AWS’s official documentation for current region and availability zone counts.
Amazon’s share price fell into the $1,676–$1,950 range during the March 2020 sell-off before recovering — gaining approximately 16% in the second half of March 2020 alone. Its price-to-earnings ratio of around 85 appeared high, but its price-to-sales of 3.5 reflected the enormous revenue base, and analysts noted that AWS’s operating margins significantly boosted overall profitability.
AWS pays no dividend, meaning all returns to investors come through share price appreciation. For long-term growth investors comfortable with higher entry prices, the combination of e-commerce tailwinds and cloud infrastructure dominance made Amazon a frequently cited holding in 2020.
3. Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL)
- Market Capitalization (early April 2020): ~$158 billion
- Annual Sales (fiscal year 2019): ~$39 billion
- Annual Dividend Yield: ~1.91%
Oracle is often overlooked in conversations dominated by AWS and Azure, but the company made significant investments in cloud infrastructure in the years leading up to 2020. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) provides compute, storage, networking, application development, and database services. Oracle has also invested heavily in autonomous database technology — a self-managing database system designed to reduce the operational overhead typically associated with database administration.
Oracle’s share price fell approximately 30% in under a month during the COVID-19-related market sell-off, but had recovered around 21% from its trough by early April 2020. At roughly $49 per share at the time, it was significantly more accessible on a per-share basis than Microsoft or Amazon, though per-share price alone is not a meaningful valuation measure.
Its valuation metrics — price-to-earnings of approximately 15.2, price-to-sales of 3.8, and price-to-book of 10.7 — made it the most conservatively valued of the three companies on this list. Combined with its higher dividend yield of approximately 1.91%, Oracle appealed to investors seeking both growth exposure and income.
From a DevOps perspective, Oracle Cloud’s differentiation lies in its enterprise database heritage and the Autonomous Database product, which applies machine learning to automate patching, tuning, and provisioning — reducing DBA workload and fitting neatly into modern cloud-native architectures.
What These Three Stocks Had in Common
Despite their differences in size, valuation, and market focus, Microsoft, Amazon, and Oracle shared several characteristics that made them stand out in early 2020:
- Established cloud platforms with global data center footprints already in place before the pandemic hit.
- Rapid demand growth driven by the sudden, large-scale shift to remote work across enterprise and mid-market customers.
- Financial resilience — all three had strong balance sheets and diversified revenue streams that cushioned the initial market shock.
- Recovery trajectories that outpaced the broader market in the weeks following the COVID-19 sell-off lows.
Important Caveats for Readers
This article reflects market conditions and company metrics from early April 2020. Share prices, market capitalizations, dividend yields, AWS region counts, and valuation multiples will all have changed substantially since publication. This content is provided for historical and educational context — it is not financial advice and should not be used as the basis for any investment decision. Always consult current financial data and a qualified financial advisor before investing.
Original source: moneyandmarkets.com (April 2020). Original post republished on BestDevOps.com.