Hard Drive Shortage Could Hurt Cloud Computing

The impact of flooding in Thailand on PC inventories going into the holiday has been widely reported, but an obvious connection we've been missing has been raised by the New York Times, and it's an important one. According to interviews conducted by Nick Bilton, cloud computing could grind to a halt early next year as storage prices skyrocket, and supply reaches historic lows. Flooding in the region has shuttered more than 1,000 factories, including several which are responsible for pumping out a significant percentage of the world's mechanical hard drives.�

It is estimated by analysts that hard drive manufacturers will ship 50 million fewer drives than usual over the next two quarters, and Seagate has suggested it might be even higher. ``By the first quarter of next year, all worldwide inventories of hard drives will be sucked dry,� Monroe warned. ``This is a crisis of escalating dimension for many I.T. revenue streams.� Monroe said that the impact from the flooding are yet to be felt across the industry.

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