Microsoft Azure revenue climbed 50% year over year during the first quarter of its fiscal 2022, mirroring the previous quarter’s 51% revenue growth and highlighting the stability of Microsoft's cloud business.

“Every organization will need a distributed computing fabric across the cloud and the edge to rapidly build, manage, and deploy applications anywhere,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during the company’s earnings call. 

Microsoft reported its quarterly earnings on Tuesday, along with rival cloud provider Google, which reported a 45% revenue increase from its cloud business compared to a year earlier.

“We are building Azure as the world's computer with more data center regions than any other provider, delivering fast access to cloud services while addressing critical data residency requirements,” Nadella said on the call, adding that 78% of Fortune 500 companies use Microsoft’s hybrid cloud. 

Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud business unit, which houses Microsoft Azure, reported revenue reaching $17 billion during the first quarter, marking 31% year-over-year growth. 

Additionally, server products and cloud services revenue jumped 35% driven in part by the 50% jump in Azure revenue.

Commercial cloud revenue increased 36% year over year. “We delivered a strong start to the fiscal year with our Microsoft Cloud generating $20.7 billion in revenue for the quarter,” Microsoft EVP and CFO Amy Hood said. 

Cybersecurity was another focus of Nadella’s remarks. “Cybersecurity is the No. 1 threat facing businesses today,” Nadella said. “Our goal is to help every organization strengthen its defense through the zero-trust architecture built on end-to-end solutions that span all clouds and all platforms,” he continued, adding that Microsoft has helped prevent more than 70 billion cyber attacks within the past year.

Nadella also noted during the earnings call that Microsoft is well-positioned to participate in the increasingly distributed computing space. “I think that the multicloud, multi-edge world is really how we built Azure in the first place,” Nadella said. 

The key in such a distributed world “is having that full suite of application infrastructure all the way from the management and security control plane,” Nadella said. “And I think we're still very early in all of that playing out, but we feel well-positioned.”