Storj Labs, the encrypted end to end cloud storage company yesterday announced the beta launch of its cloud service. The service, according to the company, enables software developers to push and pull their application data on a decentralized network.

The Storj decentralized blockchain-based cloud storage service appears similar to any other distributed networks. The storage space for the files to be stored on the platform will be provided by the community. The community members – called farmers – are similar to bitcoin miners. However, instead of contributing their processing power to the pool, they contribute storage space in return for the platform’s own cryptocurrency called Storjcoin.

According to the company’s blog post, the beta release of the Storj platform is currently operating in an invite-only stage. Therefore, only the users with invitations will be able to use the platform and evaluate its performance. Soon, it will be opened for public as well.

The company had recently announced its partnership with Microsoft Azure. Storj has joined Microsoft’s Azure platform as a Blockchain-as-a-Service provider which will be made available to the enterprise users. The enterprise users on Azure will soon be able to deploy Storj services on their Azure account using the platform’s one-click deployment option.

The current product is a result of earlier Storj Open Source project. The Storj community is made up of developers with vast experience in cloud and blockchain technology. The company led by Shawn Wilkinson already has a handful of big names like Coca-Cola, Cox enterprises, Intercontinental Group of Hotels, The Weather Channel and Capgemini as its clients. These high profile clients are expected to start using the distributed enterprise cloud solution as soon as the beta version is launched.

However, Storj is not the only player in the market. Another company, Sia is also involved in the development and deployment of decentralized cloud storage infrastructure. Sia is a Boston, Massachusetts-based company which originated three years ago at the HackMIT 2013. The company offers decentralized blockchain based enterprise level cloud storage facilities. Like Storj, Sia is powered by Siacoin.

Looking at a bigger picture, both Sia and Storj are part of the distributed computing infrastructure. Another player worth mentioning in this context is MaidSafe. MaidSafe is a distributed internet service, where the community instead of contributing their unused computer storage, share their processing power. MaidSafe also offers email, messaging and other additional services for use over the decentralized internet.

Even though the decentralized blockchain based services are still in its nascent stages, the concept of distributed computing has been there for a while now. BOINC an abbreviation for Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing is a product of University of California launched in 2002. It allowed individuals to contribute their unused processing power for scientific computing.

we can expect the blockchain technology-based distributed computing to improve in the coming days.