(Reuters] – Wall Street expects Microsoft Corp to beat Wall Street’s quarterly revenue expectations on Tuesday. The software giant saw a surge in demand from hybrid-work-model businesses for cloud-based service providers, as well as for their cloud-based solutions.

Since last year’s COVID-19 epidemic, when schools and offices were closed due to the ensuing chaos online, cloud orders for Microsoft (NASDAQ) and Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ) have risen.

Microsoft reported that revenue from the “Intelligent cloud” segment grew 31% to $17billion. According to data from Refinitiv, analysts had predicted a figure around $16.58 billion.

The company’s cloud-computing flagship, Azure, saw revenue rise by 48%, surpassing analysts’ predictions of 47.5%. According to data from Visible Al, consensus data was better than the estimates of analysts.

Azure’s growth rate, which is not broken out of revenue from cloud computing units by Microsoft, provides the best measure of its competition against Google Cloud and AWS.

Amy Hood http:// chief financial officer and executive vice president at Microsoft stated, “We gave a strong start for the fiscal year with Microsoft Cloud generating $20.7 million in revenue for quarter,”.

The overall revenue increased to $45.32 Billion in the quarter that ended September 30, from $37.15 Billion a year ago, surpassing expectations of $43.97B.

From $13.89billion, which was $1.82 per share a year ago, net income rose to $2.71 billion or $20.51 per share. It also reported a $3.3 Billion net income tax credit.