The oldest company now participating in what I call the “great game” of technology is Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT), founded in 1975. The MSFT stock initial public offering was March 1986 at $21 per share. The stock has split nine times since then.

I call today’s tech leaders the “Cloud Czars” because each quarter early in the decade, they invested the $1 billion needed to build out networks of cloud data centers and are now reaping the benefits.

Microsoft was not the first to the party, but since firming up its commitment to cloud under CEO Satya Nadella, good ‘ol MSFT has been keeping up. Its 27% gain so far in 2017 puts its market cap at $608 billion, as its revenue growth and cash flow expansion have returned through a cloud called Azure.

More good news is expected when Microsoft reports after trading today, expecting net income of 72 cents per share on revenues of $23.6 billion during what, before the cloud transition, was historically a soft quarter for the software giant.

Higher Cloud Value

Microsoft is the only company that can keep up with Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) in pure cloud revenue, thanks to its lead in the upper reaches of the cloud stack.

While Amazon still leads in selling bare-bones infrastructure, Microsoft has made its cloud a platform, offering a full suite of development tools, and delivered cloud-based applications like LinkedIn, purchased for $26.2 billion.

While the company was highly proprietary during the PC era — co-founder Bill Gates was once pictured as a Borg from Star Trek — under Nadella it has embraced open source technologies, joining the Open Source Initiative as a premium sponsor in September.

Open source has made Microsoft a partner with its customers, both working off the same shared platform. This is different from the approach made famous by International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM), which since the 1950s told companies to just let it handle their complex problems. It’s a big change from the approach taken under Nadella’s predecessor, Steve Ballmer, who saw “developers” as working entirely under Microsoft’s direction.

Big Investor Value

Nadella became Microsoft CEO in February 2014 and since then the stock has doubled in price, the dividend growing from 28 cents a share to 39 cents. The yield at Microsoft’s current price has fallen, from 2.9% then to 2.14% now, but if you got in then your investment is now yielding 4%. (That’s why an income investor doesn’t just look for yield, but growth as well.)

This has 23 of 33 analysts following the stock putting it on their buy lists, and it’s on the buy lists of InvestorPlace wrtiers 

as well. Josh Enomoto has called it a “must have.” Chris Tyler has suggested you continue the celebration.I suggested buying Microsoft on weakness in September, in August wrote it was only then pushing the start button, and in July urged readers not to sell it.

To be sure, the company’s hardware ambitions have yet to be realized, except in gaming systems where its XBox competes closely with the Sony Corp (ADR) (NYSE:SNE) PlayStation and in peripherals like keyboards and mice, but that is immaterial to the investment case.

The Bottom Line on MSFT Stock

The whispers are positive for Microsoft earnings, with analysts hinting to customers that Microsoft will bring in 76 cents per share, not the 72 cents of the official estimate. But regardless of whether this is a make or a miss, MSFT stock is a long-term holding, not a trading stock.

If it’s a beat, profit. If it’s a miss, buy it.

Dana Blankenhorn is a financial and technology journalist. He is the author of the historical mystery romance The Reluctant Detective Travels in Time, available now at the Amazon Kindle store. Write him at danablankenhorn@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @danablankenhorn. As of this writing he owned shares in MSFT and AMZN.