To excel at selling downloadable apps and advertising, cellphone retailer wanted the fastest in-store WiFi system possible.

REZ-1, Inc., a provider of asset management, equipment reservation, billing and reload services to the domestic intermodal industry, has acquired International Asset Systems (IAS), a vendor of cloud-based software for global logistics and transportation management.

Florida East Coast Railway has partnered with Logistical Labs, a provider of cloud-based supply-chain software, to expand access to EZ Buy, its online portal for intermodal rates.

3PL Central, a vendor of cloud-based software for third-party logistics (3PL) and warehouse management, has acquired Traker Systems.

It's a big and transformative phenomenon worldwide, so of course it has a buzzy lexicon all its own. You can call it whatever you want - Digital Operations Technology, Industry 4.0, Industry of the Future, The Fourth Industrial Revolution, Smart Manufacturing - but you can't ignore it. MESA International offers a concise definition for this wave of change: "Smart manufacturing is the intelligent, real-time orchestration and optimization of business, physical, and digital processes within factories and across the entire value chain."

Born two or three years after the invention of the World Wide Web, and just 12 or 13 years old when the invention of the smartphone changed everything, the latest cohort of millennials just graduated from college last spring. Now they are entering the workforce, where they will be joining their "digital native" predecessors, who already make up more than half of the workforce. And they are even more immersed in the technology and culture of the internet than their forerunners were.