The holiday season is a make or break scramble for retailers. Their offices are busy and everyone is in a high stress mode to make the season profitable. They invest in getting people in their stores or on their sites with attractive offers. Unfortunately, this omnichannel approach has given way to increase "out-of-stock" challenges.

The container shipping industry is undergoing a historic wave of consolidation as carriers seek to tighten supply to offset the historical drop in pricing.

Currently, containers, ships and other intermodal transport assets such as chassis and gensets are mainly what we call "dark, dumb and disconnected." What this means is that we really don't know much about them. They are not self-aware, we can't see them, and they can't tell us about their actions and status.