Hard drive industry, storage functionality

First, an interesting article about profitability in the hard drive industry – classic commodity economics are at play, and as consumers we are all benefiting.

At the same time, enterprise storage functionality is transitioning down to consumers – external sata connectors allowing really high speed detached storage, lightweight nas solutions, a bunch of software raid solutions – but it is all way too hard to use for most people.

Seems to me like there is a path out of commodity pricing for the hard drive guys. The first player to bring enterprise storage functionality – replication, auto-backup, hot swapping, pooling, etc – to consumers and small businesses in a brainlessly easy to use package could be a big winner.