Stronger than anticipated sales of Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007, not to mention the lift provided by Halo 3 and subsequent Xbox 360 sales, have propelled Microsoft to a healthy quarter and the market responded favorably with a 12% jump in stock price. Despite strong growth in it's core business Microsoft still has a long way to go in it's online business. “Strategically, looking forward, the challenge for Microsoft is cloud computing and Google,” according to David Mitchell Smith, Gartner analyst. NY Times story here.
