Microsoft sees $4 trillion public cloud addressable market, but hybrid needs persist: EVP Jason Zander

Microsoft's momentum with Azure began well before the Covid-19 pandemic, but as the success has continued, top executives see opportunities to win even more lucrative market share with expanded IoT and industry plays, and a consistent line of attack against AWS. 

Executive vice president Jason Zander spoke on March 1 at the Morgan Stanley 2021 TMT conference, answering analysts questions about Azure's performance and outlook, from services to hardware.

Zander told attendees that analytics and IoT continue to be areas of opportunity:

I would say some of the big areas we're seeing in terms of changes now is a lot more focused around data and analytics, basically how do I unlock all of the data silos that are out there, get more understanding of it, get some insights to stay competitive. That one's super important. We're also seeing a whole bunch of adoption across areas like IoT. That's an effort I started 5 years ago on the team, but we do trillions of messages a day. And we have just an unbelievably really great set of customer Lighthouse wins, et cetera.

Zander said Microsoft sees a total market opportunity for public cloud that could be closer to $4 trillion than an earlier estimate of $1 trillion. The company aims to serve the "bulk of the world's GDP," he said.