Shares in Microsoft Corp. rose to a new record high after it beat analysts’ estimates on fourth-quarter revenue and profit, driven by growing sales from its cloud business.

In fact, Microsoft saw strong growth across virtually all of its products as it reported earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation of $1.37 per share on revenue of $33.7 billion. Wall Street was expecting the software and cloud giant to report earnings of just $1.21 per share on revenue of $32.77 billion.

Microsoft said its revenue grew by 12% on an annualized basis in the fourth quarter, which makes it the ninth straight quarter where it has seen double-digit annualized revenue growth.

The key to Microsoft’s success was its strong cloud growth, which has been the company’s primary focus since Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella (pictured) took the top job in 2014. Nadella has overseen a shift away from the company’s Windows operating system software toward cloud services, in which customers offload much of their computing work to Microsoft’s data centers.

That change in focus helped Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud business achieve more revenue than its More Personal Computing segment for the first time. The Intelligent Cloud business includes Microsoft’s Azure public cloud services plus Windows Server, SQL Server and others. The More Personal Computing segment is primarily comprised of the firm’s Windows, Surface, Xbox and search businesses.

Intelligent Cloud revenue came in at $11.39 billion, above the analyst consensus of $11.02 billion. Microsoft still doesn’t disclose exact revenue numbers for Azure, but said its revenue there increased by 64% from the same period a year ago. That’s an impressive number, although notably it’s also the lowest growth rate Azure has seen in the previous four years, Reuters reported.

Still, investors didn’t seem unduly worried, as Microsoft’s shares were up 2.6% in after-hours trading, sending the company’s market value past $1 trillion for the first time since April. Microsoft’s shares are now up 34% this year.

Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, told SiliconANGLE that Azure’s slowing growth was to be expected after several years of strong gains.

“While Azure’s growth rate is declining, Microsoft’s cloud franchises continue to grow at very a healthy clip,” Moorhead said. “I am not concerned with the declining Azure growth rates right now, though I’m keeping my eye on it. Right now, I attribute it to the law of very large numbers. As we have even seen from AWS, as the revenue base gets massive, it’s hard to keep the rate of increase going.”

Moorhead was referring to Microsoft’s main rival in the cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services Inc., which dominates the industry with a 32.8% market share, according to data from research firm Canalys. Microsoft ranks second with a 14.6% market share, while Google LLC is third with 9.9%. Amazon and Google owner Alphabet Inc. report quarterly earnings next week.

Microsoft has been gaining ground on its chief rival, however, thanks to its strategy of bundling its Azure computing services, which are mainly used by developers, with software products such as its Office productivity suite for end-users. This strategy was evidenced just this week when Microsoft signed a $2 billion deal to provide the wireless carrier AT&T Inc. with its cloud services.

Synergy Research analyst John Dinsdale told SiliconANGLE that this strategy of combining Azure products with traditional software is one of the main factors driving the company’s growth.

“Microsoft is a very clear market leader in the software-as-a-service market and its growth rate is above the overall market growth rate,” Dinsdale said. “The SaaS market is more fragmented than cloud infrastructure services, but Microsoft still has a 17% share of the worldwide market. Its market share continues to increase by around a percentage point per year.“

Microsoft’s More Personal Computing business ended the quarter with $11.28 billion in revenue, ahead of the analyst consensus of $10.99 million.

Meanwhile the firm’s Productivity and Businesses segment, which houses Office, Dynamics and LinkedIn, saw its quarterly revenue come to $11.05 billion, up 39% year-over-year and ahead of the $10.7 billion analyst estimate.

“Microsoft is firing on all cylinders, benefiting from the integration and synergies of its products and smart partnerships, alliances and new customer deals,” said Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president of Constellation Research Inc.

Mueller said he was pleased to see Microsoft stepping up its research and development efforts in the last quarter. The company increased its investment there by about a half-billion dollars, to $4.5 billion, the analyst noted.

“Microsoft needs to keep investing in its products to maintain the momentum,” Mueller said. “The only real concern is that Microsoft spends the bulk of its quarterly profit on stock repurchases and dividends at a time when it needs to invest in capital expenditure to bolster its Azure availability zones for higher reliability.”

Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood said the company is expecting fiscal first-quarter revenue of between $31.7 billion and $32.4 billion, the midpoint of that range falling just above Wall Street’s forecast of $32 billion.

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