The sky is the limit—unless you’re Microsoft, in which case, it is a booming business line that has solidified its place as a top cloud giant over the years.

When talking about cloud hyperscalers in the industry, Azure is a name that is hard to ignore. According to Synergy Research Group, Azure had a global market share of 22% in Q1 2025. In the same period, AWS had a global market share of 29%, while Google Cloud had 12%.

To understand how Azure secured a spot as one of the Big Three, IT Brew caught up with cloud computing experts to learn about some of the core decisions made in the cloud giant’s early days that positioned it for success.

Origin story. Mark Russinovich, Azure CTO and technical fellow, told IT Brew that the story behind Azure began in 2006 when Dave Cutler, known for his key role in the development of Windows NT, set off on a project to create a platform for the emerging “software-plus-service era.” The internal project was known as Project Red Dog.

“This team with Dave, under [then Microsoft Chief Software Architect] Ray Ozzie, started to look around the company and talk to different teams that had services, including teams like Hotmail and the Windows Live team, about what they needed to make it easier for them to run services,” Russinovich said.

See who picked the name, too.—BM

It costs how much now?

Member of Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE) told the European Cloud Competition Observatory (ECCO) that prices have increased “tenfold,” ranging from 800% to 1,500%, since VMware was acquired by Broadcom in 2023.

ECCO, in its most recent report on Broadcom from May, issued a critical status to the company’s “ongoing unfair software licensing practices.” In an appendix to the report, ECCO said that after the acquisition, the company “unilaterally modified the licensing terms of essential VMware software, leading to an exponential increase in prices for users.”

“The majority of CISPE members have entered into new licensing agreements with Broadcom,” ECCO stated. “However, these agreements were often signed under significant pressure, influenced by a lack [of] alternatives, abrupt contract terminations, and financial incentives such as rebates for longer-term commitments.”

One company reported a price hike of 1,050%.—CN