The Silicon Review ^Asia

Microsoft recently overtook Alphabet Inc. in market capitalization to become the world’s third most valuable company. Expectations of enhanced growth have raised the value of Microsoft stock by 43% in the year ending May 30, 2018, while that of Alphabet trails at 8.2%.

It is broadly speculated that Microsoft’s recent growth is attributed to its focus on non-windows services, with its cloud-computing platform Azure, having centre stage. Microsoft is set to offer Azure virtual machines with a staggering memory of 12TB. This has the potential to grab the attention of a whole new community of developers to the platform. Azure offers virtual machines for developers to build and test a plethora of applications of a diverse array of sizes and complexity. However, when it comes to applications that require high memory, Azure hasn’t been the top choice for developers.

All that could change with Microsoft’s unveiling of virtual machines with ultra-high memory. If 12TB sounds like much, Microsoft will also offer virtual machines with a memory of 192GB. Additionally, programmers will also have the option of going for “premium SSDs” (Solid State Drive) for greater speed or even the cheaper “standard SSDs” if speed isn’t a priority.

However, it is not yet revealed when these machines will be made available to Azure customers, nor is it clear how much they would cost.

With a current market cap of $749 billion, combined with the current growth rate, Microsoft is set to reach a market cap of $1 trillion before 2020.