Microsoft’s profit and revenue beat analysts expectations.

Microsoft Corporation reported on Thursday that sales of cloud computing services and hardware enabled the company to offset a decline in the company’s Windows business which is its core, placing their profit and revenue results above Wall Street expectations. The shares of the company have risen by 3.1 % up to $44.70 in after hours trading.

The results are pleasing, said Daniel Ives who is an FBR Capital markets analyst. Wall Street has rejoiced with these results and it seems like Microsoft is back on track after a disappointing performance last year.

Sales of Microsoft’s Windows operating system to computer manufacturers have fell by almost 19% this quarter. This shows a downturn in performance since last year when sales of Windows were boosted by consumers rushing to buy the new machines since Microsoft dropped support for the 14 year old operating system Windows XP. This decline was later offset by higher revenue from their Surface tablet, their back end server software offers and cloud solutions. Microsoft officials have stated in their report that their cloud related revenue for the first quarter has more than doubled, and that it is now at $6.3 billion a year.

On Thursday Amazon.com Inc also said that their quarterly cloud revenue has risen by almost 50%, achieving $1.57 billion which shows a similar trend. The overall revenue of Microsoft has risen by 6% reaching $21.7 billion, which is above Wall Street predictions of an average forecast of $21.1 billion, according to Thomson Reuters. With the effects of the United States dollar taken out of the equation, Microsoft stated that the revenue would have risen by 9%.

Earnings per share have fallen to 61 cents per share as opposed to last year’s quarter in which they were 68 cents per share, while analysts did predict 51 cents, on average. Most analysts made predictions that Microsoft would beat the Wall Street predictions, but in fact no one thought that such progress would be made.