You do a great job of insuring your customers. Now it's time to insure the data that allows you to serve them so well. As an $18-billion insurance company doing business in an era of heightened threats, your backup systems need to be ready for anything. Better still, they need to be mobile. Mobile data centers keep operations running during your industry's inevitable crises, ensuring that mission-critical data and applications are available over a wireless network when needed most.

After designing and testing one pilot vehicle, plan on deploying three more by the end of the first year. Anchor them at strategic hubs so that they can respond to any location within 12 hours. Consultants in the fast-growing mobile-backup industry will help you determine data and applications requirements, the servers needed to run them and the vehicle that will fit them all. They'll also spec out the trailer and handle that little detail on the roof: the satellite dish. Your staff can do much of the server-intensive installation.

"After all," says Julius Neudorfer, director of network services for North American Access Technologies Inc., "at the end of the day, this is just another company server room. It just happens to be on wheels." Oh, and one more thing: Don't forget to fill the tank.