Microsoft is rejiggering its financial reporting-and while some of the changes will lead to more transparency, others will do the opposite.

On the bright side, after years of complaints by investors, Microsoft will finally report revenue in actual dollars for Azure, its flagship cloud platform and primary growth engine.

After the market closed on Wednesday, it also released Azure revenue figures for the last eight quarters, under a newly narrowed definition of Azure that no longer includes certain coding tools, security software and specialized apps.

So now it can be told: Azure revenue was $101.9 billion during the fiscal year ended June 30, up 40% from a year earlier. By comparison, Microsoft's total revenue last year increased 18% to $331.8 billion.

But the company won't be reporting Azure's cost of revenue, operating expenses or margins. Azure will remain tucked inside a larger segment, limiting visibility into its profits.

This points to the most glaring problem with Microsoft's new disclosure regime. It is actually reducing its number of reporting segments to two from three, rather than disaggregating them to show more granular detail about each major business line's expenses and profitability.

One of the segments, called "Agents and Infra" (short for infrastructure), is a monster, with 81% of Microsoft's revenue last year and 88% of its operating income. That is the group that will include Azure and other cloud businesses. The other segment, called "Devices and Consumer," is tiny by comparison.

Microsoft previously had three reporting segments, the largest of which accounted for 42% of revenue under the old framework. In effect, management has just smooshed the bulk of its operations into a single segment, with a smaller stub to hold leftovers such as Xbox, search advertising and devices.

The company will report cost of revenue, operating expenses and operating income for both of its segments. But investors won't get that same level of disclosure across all of Microsoft's major products and service offerings.

Microsoft will report quarterly revenue for several of them, including Azure, as well as revenue and a gross-margin percentage for its overall cloud business. But expense and margin data across the product lines for the most part will remain elusive.

Opacity has long been the norm with Microsoft's financial reporting. It will still be a black box under the new structure, just with a few new touches of gray.