Microsoft Corp., on Tuesday forecast a strong end to the calendar year thanks to its booming cloud business but said supply chain woes will continue to dog key units such as those producing its Surface laptops and Xbox gaming consoles. The company beat Wall Street expectations for its first quarter ended Sept. 30, with pandemic-induced demand for the software giant’s cloud-based services driving sales. Contracts for cloud services provided by Microsoft, Amazon.com Inc’s AWS, and Alphabet Inc-owned Google Cloud have surged since last year when the COVID-19 pandemic shut offices and schools, pushing more activity online. First-quarter revenue growth for Azure, the company’s flagship cloud-computing business, came in at 48 percent in constant currency to beat analysts’ estimates of 47.5 percent, according to consensus data from Visible Alpha. Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft, said that the company also expected “broad based growth” for the …