The less sexy, non-FANG tech stocks are winning right now

The so-called “FANG” stocks—Facebook (FB), Amazon (AMZN), Netflix (NFLX) and Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL)—have dominated investor attention in the tech space with their high-growth ambitions.

But it turns out the companies that make business software may be the quiet winners in the second quarter.

The value tech cohort—from SAP (SAP) to Microsoft (MSFT) to IBM (IBM)—have posted impressive results over the past week, with particular strength in growth areas like cloud computing.

Cloud computing, which uses a network of internet-hosted remote servers to process data, has become a focus even for this cohort as they aim to refocus their business models, particularly to keep up with the new software giants like Salesforce.com (CRM) and Amazon’s Web Services division.

“Old guard” of tech earnings reports

Microsoft, under CEO Satya Nadella, continues to transform its business to focus on mobile and cloud.

In its second quarter report, revenue of $22.6 billion came in 2% above consensus estimates, representing 8% constant currency growth.

Azure, Microsoft’s major cloud offering, saw particular strength, with revenue up over 100% in the quarter.

“The Microsoft Cloud is seeing significant customer momentum and we’re well-positioned to reach new opportunities in the year ahead,” Nadella said in a release. The company has also focused on its Office 365 rollout, as a transition to a subscription-based business model is expected to boost sales growth.

Bernstein analyst Mark Moerdler pointed to continued aggressive moves in growth areas by the company.

“We believe that Microsoft, driven by its new management team, is aggressively transforming to a mobile- and cloud-centric company in which the migration to subscription and cloud will drive re-acceleration in revenue and EPS growth,” Moerdler said in a note to clients.

In IBM’s second quarter, sales of $20.2 billion beat estimates for $20.1 billion and EPS of $2.95 per share beat estimates for $2.89. While overall organic revenue growth still disappointed, key growth areas did well.

The “strategic imperatives” business—which includes analytics, security, cloud video services and Watson Health— grew 12% in the quarter and now represents almost 40% of the company’s revenue. Cloud revenues specifically rose 30% year-over-year.

CEO Ginni Rometty, who took the helm at 2012, has focused on selling off commoditized businesses while building the strategic imperatives business. She has also set out to invest $1 billion in the company’s cognitive computing software Watson as a way to tap the artificial intelligence market.

On Wednesday, SAP reported record-setting second quarter results, ahead of expectations. Sales came in at 5.24 billion euros, compared with estimates for 5.22 billion euros while operating profit of 1.52 billion euros beat estimates for 1.45 billion euros.

Importantly, cloud revenues grew 33%, which indicates that SAP is successfully managing the progressive move to the cloud, according to Credit Suisse’s Charles Brennan.

The company, which has logged 13 consecutive quarters of cloud services growth above 30%, believes its sales of cloud-based software will be bigger than traditional products by 2018.

Meanwhile, privately-held Dell’s proposal to acquire EMC (EMC) was approved on Tuesday, causing the data-storage company to rise further.

The bottom line: As investors gear up for reports from Facebook, Alphabet and Amazon next week, the “old guard” tech names—albeit less sexy—may be the ones standing out.