A recovered system could get swift access to stateful data if there were a continuous mirror image fed into a remote data center that also holds the backup virtual machines, says Indu Kodukula, CTO and executive VP of products at SunGard. Replicated data is also needed for so-called cloud bursting--when infrastructure as a service takes over for in-house servers that run out of capacity. Those online servers will need stateful data to spring into action. Kodukula says customers of such a service might even pay based on the speed of recovery.

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