I like the concept, have some comments.
The fans would need to be very quiet, I'd be upset if they were cheap and loud.
I like that my workstation (HP Z4) looks plain and vanilla on the outside, while it's spec'd out internally. I don't like flashing how much money I've dumped into something that can be picked up and hauled away in one arm. The front of this scream expensive components. Would like to see it blend into the system as much as possible, like it's not even there.
Would also be nice if it was paired with an AHCI PCIE 3.0 1x adapter that took advantage of the SAS cable for a clean install. I could take care of RAID with VROC use up a 1x slot and it wouldn't be very expensive. I've been looking for this now, and there just aren't many of these cards out that don't have a lot of unnecessary extras or take up 4x/8x slots.