Storj Labs, the distributed object storage company, recently launched a beta version of the Storj platform and revealed that it has joined the Microsoft Azure Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) ecosystem.

Storj enables software developers to push and pull data for their applications on a decentralized network. The data is stored by a community of “farmers”, who rent their unused disk space to the network in exchange for compensation in a cryptocurrency called Storjcoin. The company was born out of the open-source Storj project, in which a large community of developers joined forces to build the most efficient, decentralized cloud by using the blockchain as a backend.

Shawn Wilkinson, CEO of Storj Labs, commented on the launch:

“The long wait for our community is now over! We are delighted to release our beta platform to our community and see real world applications of the technology. The first apps have already been created on Storj, and we expect many more soon.”

Storj is joining the Azure Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) ecosystem to make its service more easily accessible to enterprises. According to the company, using a 1-click deployment process, Azure users can now spin up a server pre-configured with Storj libraries to instantly access the Storj platform.

Marley Gray, ‎Director BizDev & Strategy for Cloud & Enterprise Blockchain at Microsoft Corp. said:

“Microsoft is excited to host Storj Labs on Azure BaaS, providing our growing community of partners a fantastic distributed object storage application.”

This Azure interoperation follows similar announcements from leading blockchain technology providers, which lead to collaboration and innovation between these providers.

According to Ethereum founder, Vitalik Buterin, an important shift is underway in the industry: “Distributed file storage systems like Storj have the potential to eliminate high markup costs and market inefficiencies and provide a much higher level of privacy, reliability and quality of service than we see today.”