The freemium business model—in which some users use the product for free, and others use it for a fee—can be appealing. To succeed with the freemium model, you must first acknowledge that a revenue plan is not a business plan and then decide if it makes sense for your bottom line.

While value for money is always important, a more important question should be “What problem are you trying to solve?” Unless you fully explore the problem, you’ll have no idea if IT is the best solution.

While network standards that form the backbone of the Internet are widely accepted, cloud standards have been adopted more slowly by the community and the marketplace. As cloud infrastructure technology matures, increased vendor interest is driving a renewed effort to create viable standards.