Microsoft gave Wall Street hope, but then the cloud forecast turned dark

Microsoft Corp. caused a relief rally for the cloud on Tuesday, then rained down on that parade after less than two hours of joy.

Microsoft MSFT reported somewhat disappointing results for the holiday quarter, but the Azure cloud computing business beat Wall Street expectations and initially sent shares higher in after-hours trading. Other cloud companies – including the only rival believed to have a larger market share than Microsoft, Amazon.com Inc. AMZN – joined in the after-hours profit-making fun.

On…