Zach Skyles Owens

After blogging about SSDS I saw that people are wondering what Microsoft’s Cloud Storage offering is all about.  One reader asked…

Is it Windows Live Sky Drive?  Is it Astoria?

The answer is no…  It’s neither of the two above although it does have some features of each of them.

The best way to get the low-down on SSDS to watch Nigel Ellis’ presentation from MIX. 

I’d also recommend subscribing to the SSDS team blog.

The links above are great resources for starting to go deep…  Let’s see if I can sum up SSDS in an extended elevator pitch.

SSDS is Microsoft’s cloud storage offering built on top of SQL Server.  It’s a data storage service backed by an enterprise class SLA accessible via REST and SOAP APIs.  It’s currently accessible via an invitation beta program, a beta version will be broadly available mid-summer and is targeted to Go Live in H1 of ‘09.

For those who have been following Microsoft’s S+S message you may be excited to hear about SQL Server Data Services (SSDS) which was announced at the MIX08 Keynote today.

So what is this new cloud storage offering by Microsoft anyway?

• Microsoft hosted data storage service based on SQL Server
• Accessible via REST and SOAP web services APIs

It’s an exciting addition to the Microsoft line up of data storage products and services.  It’s great to finally be able to talk about it and we are really excited to see how developers use the service.

I’ll continue to blog about this as well as post some samples.