The Big Tech rivals are spending more than ever, but analysts are more concerned about Microsoft at the moment.

This could be a key moment for anyone interested in buying Microsoft stock.

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) continues to provide investors with earnings beats and strong growth in its cloud, AI and gaming segments.

Though Microsoft reported on Azure’s growth rate, it doesn’t break out exact numbers for the cloud business. Instead, those are bundled with the company’s Intelligent Cloud business segment, which generated $32.91 billion in sales, up 29% from a year earlier and above the Street’s consensus estimate of $32.4 billion.

Microsoft services are down for thousands of users, according to tracking service Downdetector.

Microsoft reports revenue of $81.3 billion for the October-December quarter, marking a 17% increase from the previous year.

Microsoft execs have offloaded millions of dollars worth of stock over the past quarter, as the firm's outlook (no pun intended) looks murky.

For the quarter, Microsoft is expected to report earnings per share (EPS) of $3.92 on revenue of $80.3 billion, according to Bloomberg analyst consensus estimates. That’s up from an EPS of $3.23 and revenue of $69.6 billion the company saw in Q2 last year.

Microsoft reported issues with sending and receiving email messages through Outlook, searching in OneDrive and creating chats in Teams. Microsoft on Thursday resolved technical issues that got in the way of people sending and receiving email messages in its Outlook application and completing other tasks.

Revenue from the company’s cloud computing unit failed to meet analysts’ expectations.

Microsoft has released another emergency Windows 11 update after a January patch triggered widespread app crashes, Outlook failures, and cloud sync issues, forcing the company into rare back to back fixes.