  Entanglement is a central feature of quantum theory. Mathematical properties
and physical applications of pure state entanglement make it a template to
study quantum correlations. However, an extension of entanglement measures to
mixed states in terms of separability does not always correspond to all the
operational aspects. Quantum discord measures allow an alternative way to
extend the idea of quantum correlations to mixed states. In many cases these
extensions are motivated by physical scenarios and quantum information
protocols. In this chapter we discuss several settings involving correlated
quantum systems, ranging from distributed gates to detectors testing quantum
fields. In each setting we show how entanglement fails to capture the relevant
features of the correlated system, and discuss the role of discord as a
possible alternative.
