Cloud computing by Microsoft has taken another step

Article first published as SkyDrive App's Integration in Windows 8 on Technorati.

Microsoft is going to integrate a desktop app version of SkyDrive, its cloud storing service, for Internet Explorer in Windows 8, as announced by Microsoft’s official Building Windows 8 blog.

SkyDrive service is storing about 10 petabytes of data and is in use by 17 million people at this time.

Mike Torres and Omar Shahine, group program managers for SkyDrive, have written in a company blog post that Microsoft is going to change SkyDrive "from a website today into a true device cloud for Windows customers."

"With Windows 8, we wanted to make sure that your files would be instantly available and up-to-date as you move between PCs — without configuring add-ons or using a USB drive," they further wrote.

This SkyDrive app is included in the Consumer Preview of Windows 8 and is available to use from any Metro-Style app. Consumer Preview of Windows 8 is going to be launched on February 29.

"This will bring a file cloud to every Metro style app, allowing you to open files in your SkyDrive and save them right back to your SkyDrive just like you would on your local hard drive," the blog post says.

Microsoft is also featuring "drag-and-drop upload and download support for SkyDrive, anywhere access to your data, offline access, and the power of Windows Explorer to manage your files and folders."

The blog post has also announced to fetch files through SkyDrive.com. Through the fetch files feature, users will access the files of their own desktop, from any computer, if the SkyDrive feature is on.

Omar Shahine and Mike Torres has described this as,

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.