Georgion said the Data Domain boxes automatically compensate for any network latency, so if you tell the appliance the data will take 200 milliseconds to get from the ship to the San Diego data center -- and let it know the bandwidth of your network -- it will automatically stream the data for maximum performance.

Compensating for network latency was also key for another Fugro project: surveying 40% of Australia's coastline via airplane. The project involves flying a small plane over the coastline and shooting a laser from the plane, which penetrates the water's surface and maps the seabed. Because the area being surveyed -- Queensland in North Eastern Australia - is so remote, the only place available to transmit the data to San Diego without setting up a field data center was a small room over an old bar in the Outback, said Georgion. He's using a T1 line over the bar's phone.

"It's like one of those places that are not near anything for, like, 1,000 miles," Georgion says.

The Australian coastline survey project was split into parts, with half taking place before this year's rainy season and half after. The first survey data was collected and transmitted in a traditional manner, by setting up a data center with NetApp arrays and a StorageTek tape library in a hanger. Because of the cost involved, that phase was unprofitable, Georgion said. After the four-month rainy season ended, Georgion set up the Data Domain boxes in the ramshackle Outback apartment to transmit the data to San Diego for processing. "It's turned us from unprofitable to [profitable]," he said.