After posting its latest quarterly results, there is absolutely no denying that Amazon is not only an online retailer but also a cloud computing giant.

Amazon likes to dabble in different things. It started out as an online merchant but has since become a hardware manufacturer (creating devices like phones and tablets and speakers and what not) and a cloud pioneer, providing the infrastructure needed to power its own streaming services as well as its competitors, including Netflix. 

Amazon Web Services is Amazon's cloud computing division - and we've been able to see just how strong it is ever since the company started divulging what it makes as a seperate category within financial statements two quarters ago. Compared to the same period last year, for instance, revenue swelled a whopping 78 per cent.

AWS posted $2.1 billion in revenue and a $521 million profit, meaning it saw a 432 per cent year-over-year increase in profit. But that's still just 8 per cent of Amazon's total revenue. The company itself reported net revenue of $25.4 billion (24 per cent increase yoy) and net income of $79 million.

That means net income is dramatically up, considering Amazon posted a net loss of $437 million in the year-ago quarter. And all of this actually beat analysts' expectations. Amazon's shares spiked more than 10 per cent this afternoon, largely due to it demolishing the consensus estimate of Wall Street and AWS' fast growth.

Tune into the company's conference call at 2pm EST to hear Amazon executives discuss the earnings in detail.