Microsoft reveal more about Skydrive in Windows 8

, Group Program Managers for SkyDrive. Microsoft are going all out with the cloud in Windows 8 and their vision is great and very aggressive.

We think what people want in personal cloud storage is a single drive that’s available across all of their devices, tailored to the experiences they’re using, providing instant, secure, and private access to their files, and sharing files and folders with people they choose. To bring this to billions of people, our approach is to seamlessly connect the files (and behaviors) that people have today on the PC with the app and device experiences that they will use in the future. Rather than using a patchwork of services, people can use one service to connect to their files – with no compromises. No copying files from one cloud to another just to share or collaborate. No converting files or having to switch to new apps. No searching across different storage areas to find files.

Microsoft are using their experience with storing TONS of Hotmail data (10 perabytes) and knowledge of the shared infrastructure to optimize the experience with Skydrive. Their post covered the following:

• SkyDrive Metro style app on Windows 8
• SkyDrive files integrated into Windows Explorer on the desktop, and
• The ability to fetch remote files through SkyDrive.com

First, there’s going to be a Skydrive Metro Style application in Windows 8.

[caption id="attachment_13848" align="alignnone" width="590"] Skydrive photo[/caption] We’ll get a chance to kick the tires once the Windows 8 Consumer Preview is released. The new app is focused on focused on two things:

1. Being a fast, fluid, touch-first version of SkyDrive that makes it quick, easy, and even fun to browse and access your files, and
2. Making SkyDrive available for use from any Metro style app via the file picker (open/save) and the new Share charm in Windows 8.

Skydrive will be integrated across applications in Windows 8 when they use Charms and Contracts. For app developers, this means that, so long as your app supports opening and saving documents and photos, it will automatically support SkyDrive without any additional work.

Next, there’s going to be a Skydrive Desktop Application as well.

[caption id="attachment_13850" align="alignnone" width="590"] SkyDrive Explorer[/caption] The desktop application will be available in Windows 8 and the older version of Windows as well.

Of course, there are people who will use older versions of Windows for a while, so SkyDrive on the desktop will also run on Windows Vista and Windows 7. If you want to make sure your files come with you to Windows 8 and you’re still running Windows 7, you’ll just put them in your SkyDrive folder. This makes it easier to upgrade to Windows 8 or make sure you can access your files across all of your PCs.

This next one is BIG.

Skydrive.com – the new storage portal

[caption id="attachment_13851" align="alignnone" width="590"] Skydrive Fetch[/caption] This is pretty amazing… Microsoft is going to allow you to use your browser and reach into your computer’s files from anywhere in the world.

With SkyDrive in Windows 8, you won’t just have cloud files synced to your PC. You can also turn your entire PC into your own private cloud, and use its terabytes of local storage to easily access, browse, and stream your files from anywhere by simply fetching them from SkyDrive.com. When designing the new SkyDrive, we knew not everyone would want to put 100% of their files in the cloud just yet. People are selective, and while some will move all of their files into SkyDrive, others will want to start slowly and use SkyDrive just for roaming some important documents and pictures from their Windows Phone camera roll. Knowing that most people would still have files on a remote PC that weren’t available through SkyDrive, we built a new feature that allows you to “reach across” the Internet to access any file, stream videos, or view photo albums from a remote PC that is running SkyDrive on the desktop. For any remote folder or file, you can also choose to “copy to SkyDrive,” so that you’ll always have it across your devices. Internally we call this the “Forgot something?” feature. If you forget to put something on SkyDrive, you’ll still be able to access it on your remote PC through SkyDrive.com. We’ve done special work to enable remote streaming of video, and we’ll treat photo albums on your remote PC exactly as we do photo albums in SkyDrive, with the same beautiful full-screen viewer. We realize this is more of an enthusiast feature, as most people won’t have an always-on PC at home, but for those who do, fetching files works like magic.

There will be extensive security around this feature as well. Now this effectively means GoToMyPC as a service is dead. Hilarious. You can read the full post here. Here’s a video that they put together as well… hIxT-Kd5C5M]]>