Cloud growth buoys Microsoft while revenue shrinks

Microsoft's cloud successes buoyed the company through its last quarter, which was otherwise a mixed financial bag.Revenue fell more than 12 percent from a year earlier to $20.4 billion, though profit grew almost 2 percent to $4.62 billion. Like other companies, Microsoft cited currency exchange rates for its revenue drop. They had a pronounced effect on some of the company's key metrics. For example, Office commercial products and cloud services revenue declined 2 percent, but grew by 5 pe