While driving to Ohio this weekend I was thinking a bit on how the upcoming SharePoint 2010 provides for remote blob storage and some scenarios around this. The desire to move file storage for records archives, multimedia storage, etc. has prompted support even in 2007 from most major SharePoint management vendors. With their add-ons companies can have the content instead stored in cheap file storage. However, there is an scenario I have still not seen addressed that has me thinking. With many companies looking to offload much of the requirements around application hosting and content storage to reduce costs what about having the cloud act as the remote storage mechanism. Why not have Azure be that tier to which SharePoint is actually storing identified repositories. The rather having to pay for, maintain, and grow, large file storage for the SharePoint system you can use a pay as you need infrastructure where the maintenance costs and efforts are handled for you. This could also be ideal for Internet facing instances where folks want to store content (perhaps media files and such). I have yet to see support for this scenario but with 2010 coming I can foresee a number of possibilities around this.
In this geocast, created using IncaX Live Media GPS on my HTC Ozone Windows Phone, I discuss SharePoint 2010 remote blob storage and Azure.