Just about a year ago, SkyDrive launched a new set of APIs and, over the course of the last year, Microsoft’s cloud storage service also rolled out SDKs for virtually every major platform. Today, Microsoft is launching a set of new SDKs for .NET and Windows Phone 8 developers.
A .NET SDK, Microsoft writes today, is something its developers have been asking for. The company, of course, already offered a Windows Phone SDK for SkyDrive, but today’s release also brings the storage service to Windows Phone 8. You can find more details about the SDKs in today’s announcement.
SkyDrive As A Platform
There can be little doubt that SkyDrive is at the center of the company’s efforts to reinvent its brand on the web. So far, it looks like SkyDrive has been a reasonable success for Microsoft. Just a few days ago, for example, Microsoft announced that overall SkyDrive usage – as measured by the amount of data stored on the service – doubled over the last six months. One thing Microsoft has clearly understood is that it needs to make its service as open as possible if it wants to be able to compete with Google Drive, Dropbox and similar services.
There are currently quite a few apps that integrate with SkyDrive, including the likes of Podio, Xobni and Zapier. As part of today’s launch, the SkyDrive team also announced that IFTTT, the popular service that lets you create customizable connections between different web services, DocuSign, the online signature service, and text-to-audio transcription service SoundGecko now feature SkyDrive integrations.
Given that SkyDrive is now also an important and built-in part of Windows 8, we will likely see Microsoft continue to focus on this service in the coming months and we’ll also see more integrations with it from small and large developers.