Usualy the contingency mission-critical databases and applications running on company hardware is done at an alternate location, or part of the infrastructure is duplicated to avoid outages. There is no reason to assume this is no longer necessary when you are using a cloud service. However, most cloud service providers do not yet support a scenario where you pay a very small fee for the ability to use a service only as a back-up when disaster strikes. Currently your only option for cloud services that are part of the mission-cirtical infrastructure is to spread them over different providers. I can only assume that you do this already with your internet connection, using several lines from different providers with different ISP's. Has anyone been involved in such a scenario?