Here are 4 random thoughts from the STC (Society of Telecom Consultants) today.

The oil industry looks at green. When you are doing a comparison between Hosted PBX and Premise based PBX, remember that when you are moving hardware to cloud, so the premise saves on power, A/C, battery, and other stuff, which also means that on Cloud Communications means that the electric consumption is moved to a shared environment. It's a Green effort.

When interviewing a Hosted PBX or Cloud Communications providers, ask about their data center, redundancy planning and network architecture.

The Fremium model has some good examples like GigaOm, Pandora and 37Signals. Free service but lots of premium service works for consultants.

We are all publishers today thanks to Amazon, Lulu, wordpress, blogger and Seth Godin's Domino project. My books are now on itunes (http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/isbn9781257147564 and http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/isbn9781257242399) and B&N Nook (http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ebooks)