I have thought of this same Question. I would Purchase A lot of Servers and Co-Locate them in a level 5 datacenter one in Arizona, One in New Jersey, and the other in Texas.

I would have all of them connect and use each other for backup while some at each data center would be for VPS Hosting, Shared Hosting, and Dedicated Server Resell.

My ultimate hosting is on the system im running right now. Quad core processors running on a linux operating system. With a fully customized apache web server. Sweet Hardware.

You can always host with a provider that has multiple data centres so at least billing and support is centralised.

Connect & network them all is a good idea. Ive wondered this myself. The data multiple sounds good though, having everything centrailized is a great idea.