Amazon announced impressive financials for the quarter ending March 31, 2016, fueled largely by growth in its cloud business, Amazon Web Services. Amazon revenue rose 28.2% to $29.13 billion while AWS revenue rose 64% to $2.56 billion, in comparison with the first quarter of 2015 in both cases. Operating income from AWS amounted to $604M whereas Amazon, as a whole, reported $1.1 billion in operating income. In other words, operating income from AWS represents roughly 55% of the company’s operating income as a whole, even though its revenue accounts for only 9% of the company’s total revenues for the quarter. The release of Amazon’s Q1 2016 financials underscores the importance of AWS to Amazon at large while Amazon, as a whole, now marks four consecutive quarters in the black as it achieves profitability as a result of the growing maturation and diversification of its online retail business. This week’s financials represent a huge coup for AWS and impressively underscore its ability to grow and remain profitable despite intensifying competition from Microsoft Azure and the Google Cloud Platform.