dug 
I’m just about to join a trial with a company called Cognima. The have a technology called Cogima Replicate™ which, in essence, creates images of all your stuff on all your devices. It copies images on one phone to your other phone, your website, your pc and your pda–it replicates (creates replicants?) your data.
Now, having been trained in these matters by a fierce and determined guru of the server-side, at first I thought Replicate™ was a bad idea. I’m loath to admit this as–not surprisingly–Cognima is also a client of mine. I’ve worked with them for a long time now and rekon they’re a pretty smart bunch of people:-)
But it’s a hard habit to break–where I come from, you never create duplicates–you distribute one master dataset (or a limited number of ‘images’) using the network. You have one web page viewed by many browsers, one database queried by many clients and so on.
What I think I’m going to find on the Cognima trial is that dogma isn’t always a good thing. I’m guessing that what these guys have done, is truly understand the way integrated mobile devices have changed the way we use our data. They not only understand the underlying technology, they are suggesting ways to make it work in a real-world context–they are guessing what we’ll be using tomorrow and what impact that use will have on us.
In reality, the Replicate™ techology does a lot more than make copies of your stuff. The bit that makes it work, the bit that makes it right in the context of replicate vs. distribute is the way the system monitors your data. it uses the always-on network that connects your mobile devices to do all the legwork in the background, so that the stuff is just there when you need it. It’s these advanced management skills that are going to make me love this product.
You can read more about this stuff on the Cognima website (see Snap, Safeguard, Refresh, Repair)