While Azure has been growing steadily, it faces steep competition for big deals from Amazon.com Inc., the dominant cloud service, and Google, which ranks third in the market but is pouring resources into the business as it works to catch up.
Google has tried to step away from transactional deals and instead pursue strategic partnerships. In some of these deals, old-school clients get access to a team of Google engineers, who will help the carmaker develop new digital services.
The provider powers up its application-centric infrastructure business strategy with a customer hand-holding capability.
The largest U.S. technology companies continued to spend millions on lobbying last quarter, seeking to sway legislation intended to bolster antitrust enforcement.
If confirmed by the Senate, Kanter would take over the antitrust division as it forges ahead with a monopoly lawsuit filed in October against Google and an investigation of Apple.