The past week was all about earnings, with Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Google LLC all reporting. The big focus, of course, was cloud platforms.

Industry analysts John Furrier (pictured, left) and Dave Vellante (right) analyzed that news and much more on the latest episode of theCUBE Podcast. Microsoft posted strong results this week, with revenue growing 13% to $56.5 billion for the quarter ended in September, which was up from the 11% growth the company reported in the same quarter the year prior.

“They were the only company that cited actual revenue and tailwinds from AI. They said they had a 300-basis point tailwind, so 3% added growth to Azure because of AI,” Vellante said. “Azure was up 28% in constant currency, which is faster than the previous quarter. I mean, its productivity businesses is up double digits. Even their PCs are up.”

The only slight negative in Microsoft’s earnings was that it was conservative on some of its bookings guidance, according to Vellante. But it’s grasping at straws to go looking at that, and the development encapsulates what came out of Supercloud 4, according to Furrier.

“I said this in our wrap-up there — Microsoft, and people in-market that have data and presence, are going to get a massive bump with AI immediately,” Furrier said. “What Microsoft did with AI, they won the marketing war with this out of the gate. Obviously, they’re leading AWS and Amazon by miles on the market.”

Though it’s a marketing war, Microsoft has an existing install base in the enterprise, and decades since its founding of enterprise selling, Furrier noted. Microsoft has a great ecosystem, but Azure is winning right now by having a great product with artificial intelligence for the enterprise.

“Combined with the install base, combined with the relationships, AI makes Microsoft better in the enterprise and harder to switch or less inclined to get someone to switch to AWS,” he said.

Reflections on Supercloud 4 and Supercloud 5 around the corner

This past week, “Supercloud 4: Generative AI Transforms Every Industry,” wrapped up, an event that examined how the explosion of AI continues to transform enterprises across industries. It was an event with a “perfect storm” of great guests, according to Furrier.

“I’ve been getting feedback on LinkedIn: ‘This is the best event I’ve ever seen. You guys did an amazing job with the short hits,'” Furrier said. “‘The breadth of guests was phenomenal.'”.

During the event, analysts from theCUBE spoke with AI executives, experts, technologists, investors and thought leaders. Vellante gave a special shout-out to Howie Xu, senior vice president of engineering AI/ML at Palo Alto Networks Inc., who hosted an exclusive panel during the event.

“John and I gave up the mic, which we hate to do, but Howie’s a friend,” he said. “And I love the fact that he did his homework beforehand. He conducted two polls beforehand, and he brought those data into the discussion. He got deep into it. That was a real highlight. That was like the cherry on top of Supercloud 4.”

Coming up in about a month is theCUBE’s Supercloud 5 event, which will focus on editorial coverage of the ongoing cloud and AI wars as we head into conference season for two tech titans: AWS and Microsoft. In this special edition of the Supercloud series, we’ll be bringing together top minds in cloud computing to discuss the latest trends and innovations, with analyst-led panels on AWS re:Invent and Microsoft Ignite. 

“Given the payload of content that’s going to be coming out of our editorial team coverage of re:Invent and combined with Microsoft dropping their content messaging and announcements at Ignite, we’re going have to do a special Supercloud 5,” Furrier said. 

Supercloud 5 will feature keynote presentations, panel discussions and breakout sessions from leading cloud experts.

On not counting out Amazon and Google

During Supercloud 4, Vellante said that it was way too early to count out the likes of Amazon and Google from the AI race, despite some people calling it already. Taking a look at spending data, one can point to ChatGPT as the seminal moment, and one can see what happened to OpenAI LP and Microsoft and its momentum after ChatGPT.

“You also saw that with the entire AI and ML sector — jumped up,” Vellante said. “It had bottomed before ChatGPT, October 22, it bottomed after being really at the height of the pandemic. It was high, then it came down. After ChatGPT had shot back up, it stole from other areas.”

After the announcement, the momentum of Microsoft shot up, but after Google Next, so did Google’s momentum. Spending data also revealed that IBM Corp.’s watsonx actually also has some momentum.

“Amazon announced Bedrock general availability this month,” Vellante said. “They’re going to be in a position to tell a strong story at re:Invent.”

Amazon is going to get a bounce after AWS re:Invent with businesses adding on to its AI services, but a big question remains moving forward.

“We talked about this at Supercloud 4: This is the first time ever Amazon has not been in the lead,” Vellante said. “They’re spotting points to the opposition. First time ever.”

Watch the full podcast below to find out why these industry pros were mentioned:

Rob Strechay, analyst at SiliconANGLE Media
Andy Jassy, president and CEO of Amazon
Adam Selipsky, CEO of AWS
Clayton Christensen, Harvard professor and author
Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO of Microsoft
Dave Donatelli, CEO of Riverbed Technology
Joe Tucci, chairman and co-founder at Big Growth Partners
Ori Goshen, co-founder and co-CEO of AI21 Labs
Steve Jobs, co-founder and former CEO and chairman of Apple
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms
Andy Pernsteiner, CTO of VAST Data
Bratin Saha, VP and GM of AI and machine learning at AWS
Howie Xu, SVP of engineering and AI/ML at Palo Alto Networks
Randy Seidl, founder of Sales Community
Lisa Martin, owner and principal at LuccaZara and host of theCUBE
Savannah Peterson, founder and chief unicorn at Savvy Millennial and host of theCUBE
Adrian Cockcroft, tech adviser

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Photo: SiliconANGLE