Adoption of carton-level tagging using temperature-sensing RFID for pharmaceuticals could be nearing an inflection point, as was seen recently with item-level tagging in apparel. But tracking temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals is very different from tracking apparel.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, wrote George Santayana, and if you've observed technology long, you know that the cycles of repetition become shorter with each passing year. When it comes to CRM, we're seeing it again in the form of social CRM: companies are making the same mistakes they made at the start of the CRM era.

In the last few decades, statisticians and computer scientists have produced a dazzling arsenal of extremely powerful tools to help managers translate data into business decisions.

An IDC MarketScape report from IDC Retail Insights finds that product lifecycle management has evolved to become a central lynchpin for retailers to conduct customer-centric, efficient and effective brand management. The new study, IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Retail Product Life-Cycle Management (PLM) Applications 2012 Vendor Assessment, examines the impact of retail PLM and its ability to improve return on capital and brand equity, while reducing risk. Vendors evaluated in this report include: Centric Software, Core Solutions, Dassault Systemes, Gerber, Lectra, NGC, PTC, SAP, Siemens and TradeStone Software.

A functioning demand-planning process is a key enabler for supply chain organizations, and getting the process right is fundamental to improving demand-planning effectiveness, according to Gartner analysts.

Diogo Lobo, head of international logistics with JBS USA, examines the various technology tools that are available for planning, analyzing and managing transportation.

Anthony Perkins wants employees at BNY Mellon to bring their personal smartphones to work and use those instead of company-issued BlackBerries to access business email, applications and data. But not all employees are comfortable with having their personal phones locked down and controlled as tightly as the BlackBerries that Perkins would like to phase out. That's where the notion of containerization comes in.

Cloud computing is slowly becoming a mainstream technology. However, even before the hype cycle has died down, cloud providers are already starting to see downward price pressures. Every hosting provider under the sun is now repackaging itself as a cloud provider, and basic capacity and services are quickly becoming commodities.

Liaison Technologies, a provider of cloud-based integration and data-management services, has acquired Hubspan, the business-integration software vendor.

International Asset Systems (IAS) has introduced ChasssisManager, a service intended to simplify the rental process and maximize asset utilization for chassis providers.