Microsoft To Change How It Reports Finances

Microsoft Corp. announced Monday afternoon that it will change the financial breakdown provided every quarter to focus on its cloud software and hardware ambitions, beginning with the 2016 fiscal year. The software giant said it will break down revenues and operating income in three groups, dubbed "productivity and business processes," "intelligent cloud" and "more personal computing." Productivity and business processes includes Microsoft's Office and Dynamics CRM cloud software; intelligent cloud is cloud hardware and other services, including Azure, Microsoft's cloud platform that competes with Amazon Web Services, among others; while the final segment will include Microsoft's consumer-facing businesses, such as Windows and Xbox. Microsoft previously broke down revenues and other financial metrics into more groups: "Devices and consumer licensing," "computing and gaming hardware," "phone hardware," "devices and consumer other," "commercial licensing," "commercial other" and "corporate and other." The company plans a conference call for Tuesday morning to discuss the new financial reporting structure, according to its official announcement.