For large enterprises that old architecture you refer to means long lead times on network and storage outage notifications, and huge fallout if an outage window is blown.
And if the building network goes down, or if your storage servers are located off site because you’re too big for one building and the commercial internet goes down, etc etc
But it doesn’t have to be OneDrive. There are many other options. I run ownCloud 10 for my personal files. If I were a small to medium business, I would look hard at OCIS.
All of these kinds things need protection against data loss and centralized control+management, not just the user folder alone.
Sadly One Drive has pushed out the implementation of proper DMS in some instances.
Technically speaking, Windows does support client-side caching on network drives. I've used it in the past for a highly limited number of users (read: me, on a personal share) and it works kind of like OneDrive/Dropbox/other cloud platform. But it's really rough and doesn't handle conflicts well.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/iis/web-hosting/configurin...
YES, you can do GPO redirect desktop etc to network drive but needs a VPN and sync is also slow.
OneDrive has solved this, like it or not.