Sometimes success is a matter of being at the right place at the right time. As the article mentions, many customers were afraid of AWS because they feared Amazon snooping in their retail intel. Because MS doesn't have a big e-store presence, they were not a retail threat. And Azure integrates better with existing Windows networks. Compatibility is still a key here, not raw merit. AWS is technically better.

That being said, Satya has been a steady hand and has made it fairly easy to keep running legacy software rather than pulling the carpet out, like VB-classic (desktop) did. Google, on the other hand, changes products like a teen changes fashion.

The VB-Classic fiasco under Ballmer sent panic through the industry, making customers realize they can no longer bet the farm on any MS tech, which they had been doing. Dot-Net was not backward compatible. COBOL still lives largely because co's don't or can't F with it. That's a lesson to not be ignored. (The need for a network GUI standard with similar properties is still out there.)

Businesses hate upgrading just for the sake of upgrading. Satya seems to understand this, making transitions gentler and more gradual.