I ran out of room on my laptop the other day.  I’m pumped!

That’s kind of why I’m starting this blog.

It’s not that I like unplanned interruptions and computer problems.  OK, it’s more of a nuisance than a problem really.  But Disk Cleanup and compression only bought me time.  One of these days I’ll have to go to IT and submit to The Process to get a bigger drive for my two-year old machine.  Not looking forward to that.

What turns my crank is that I’ve never run out of space before. I’m not a Luddite, but I’m not a leading edge techno-guy either.  If I can fill my drive at work, then it’s probably happening to a sizable group of others.  What are you seeing?

It’s one thing to run out of space at home with family videos, movies, etc.  But this is office stuff (mostly).   I know what put me over the edge, too: free downloads of NBC season pilot edisodes on Amazon Unbox.  Something to watch on a business trip to Portland.  One click each, totally free.  Just like that, 4 GB. 

Make no mistake, as a Seagate employee I know this trend is good for business.  In fact, the demand for drives today is outpacing what all six of the world’s disk drive manufacturers combined seem to be able to get out the door.

But the bigger deal to me is that data and storage are moving up the value chain.  It’s not about bits and bytes; it’s changing the way we get through the day.  If you’re a system builder and you’re still selling storage the way you did 5 years ago, as a commodity component buried on your Bill of Materials, you’re missing the boat.

Do you see a change in your customers around storage?  Are you getting more for your solutions because your customers need more storage, and more ways to manage and protect their information?  Are YOU running out of space?

 By the way, my backup drive is full, too.