Article in the SMH giving an example of how dispersed a business can be in terms of physical setup. Jeremy Howard who runs FastMail.fm from Melbourne has staff in 4 regions of the world, servers in 2 locations, and customers in 168 countries. His hard drive in Manhatten, U.S. breaks down and yet from Melbourne, he is able to arrange for the the back-up server to be put into use and for IBM to pick up the old one. The actual article goes through all the kind detailed steps he took, which go beyond instructing one of his staff to do it all from the U.S. Fun read.
W: http://smh.com.au/articles/2004/08/02/1091412051791.html