
Welcome to the Cloud Wars Minute — your daily news and commentary show, hosted by Cloud Wars Founder Bob Evans. Each episode provides insights and perspectives around the “reimagination machine” that is the Cloud.
This episode is sponsored by Acceleration Economy’s Digital CIO Summit, taking place April 4-6. Register for the free event here. Tune in to the event to hear from CIO practitioners discuss their modernization and growth strategies.
In this Cloud Wars Minute, Bob Evans reviews the latest drop in Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 growth rate after CEO Satya Nadella said its business applications are taking share.
Highlights
00:38 — On the company’s recent earnings call, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella described what was going on with its business applications. He says Dynamics 365 — for which the revenue was up 21% in the recent quarter — is taking share.
01:05 — Who is Microsoft Dynamics 365 taking share from? Bob says he started with the “usual suspects.” After comparison, Bob says that Oracle, SAP, and Workday are “far faster growing” than Dynamics 365.
01:35 — For the quarter that ended Nov. 30, Oracle’s SaaS revenue grew by 40% for a total quarterly revenue of $2.8 billion. SAP’s SaaS revenue was up by 30%, for a total quarterly revenue of $2.33 billion. Workday, whose most recent quarter ended on Oct. 31, said its subscription revenue grew 22.3% for a total revenue of $1.43 billion. Salesforce does not “cleanly, specifically break out” its SaaS revenue, but Bob estimates it grew about 15% for a total quarterly revenue of $5.5 billion. Microsoft does not release its quarterly revenue for Dynamics 365, although it did grow by 21%.
02:25 — Perhaps, Microsoft is taking some share in service and customer experience from Salesforce. All other companies are growing much faster than Microsoft.
03:27 — Going back a year, Microsoft saw a 45% growth rate in its Dynamics 365 applications, which is a huge drop in 12 months. Since Nadella said Dynamics 365 is taking share, Bob says “it could be from home.”