REDMOND, Wash. — January 23, 2014 — Microsoft Corp. today announced revenue of $24.52 billion for the quarter ended December 31, 2013. Gross margin, operating income, net income, and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $16.24 billion, $7.97 billion, $6.56 billion, and $0.78 per share, respectively.

It’s of no surprise that Microsoft is having record earnings. Despite the negative reception and review of Windows 8, Microsoft has received tremendous praise for their latest cloud offering Azure, Microsoft Server 2012 R2 featuring Hyper v.3 and SMB 3.0, Office 365 and their new Outlook.com.

Microsoft is a power-house, a force to be reckoned with. They rule the enterprise market and any remaining market share they don’t own will soon be theirs. Directions on Microsoft is a great blog that provides independent IT planning information for services based upon Microsoft technologies. https://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/roadmap One topic that keeps coming up is hosted enterprise voice in Office 365. It’s coming, soon, Microsoft bought Skype and they now control the world’s largest PBX. It’s only a matter of time before hosted enterprise voice becomes common-place. Why is this so important? Because, 25% of enterprises are already using Office 365! “It’s a big claim to say 25 percent of enterprises are using Office 365,” said Michael Silver, a Gartner analyst. He’s right, it is a  big claim but it’s supported by the evidence, Office 365 has tremendous momentum and it’s not going anywhere.

In 2014 if your plans don’t include Microsoft, they should!

For more info: http://www.microsoft.com/investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Earnings/PressReleaseAndWebcast/FY14/Q2/default.aspx