"There was no backup and recovery plan, which was scary," hesays. A former senior recovery specialist at SunGard AvailabilityServices, Johnson knows data recovery. "I have a lot of experiencewith what works and what doesn't work when it comes to dataprotection," he explains.

Johnson also knows how easy it is for even the mosttechnologically sophisticated firms to overlook the issue, adding,"Most organizations don't think much about disaster recovery untilthey need it." NAI Utah was different: its need for a comprehensivedata recovery plan was already on its radar screen. In fact,Johnson adds, "Creating it was one of the big reasons I washired."

NAI Utah is a full-service brokerage with five offices in Utahand an affiliation with NAI Global, a worldwide real estate servicenetwork with 375 offices in 55 counties. The firm, founded just 10years ago, prides itself on its technology. It's known fordeveloping technology-driven programs like Astro--an acronym forAdvanced System for Tracking Real Estate Operations--andRealTrac.

• Astro tracks and analyzes real estate property, comparableinformation and internal office procedures. Complete with ad¬vancedreporting capabilities, ASTRO incorporates a search engine, GISmapping and opportunities for agents to monitor the status of eachdeal.
• RealTrac is a service delivery system designed to cut cycletime, boosts efficiency and reduce costs. It includes a publicportal, a broker intranet and an insti¬tutional/corporate clientintranet, linked across a platform to create seamless connectionsbetween buyers, sellers, tenants, NAI brokers and projectowners.

Server virtualization has been around since the mainframe days,explains Framingham, MA-based IDC, a global provider of researchand advisory services for the technology, telecommunications andconsumer technology markets. But it's taken off in the past decade,and is expected to emerge as one of the killer apps for 2008.