Never mind the naysayers: Del Monte Foods is a big believer in cloud technology. In just three years, the $3.7bn company has placed its entire inbound supply chain in the cloud. The result, according to senior manager of global trade compliance Brian White, has been tighter relationships with suppliers, and greater visibility of product in the pipeline.

What is this thing called "cloud computing"? It's nothing new - that much is certain. Software vendors have been offering applications "hosted" off-site for years. The idea of computer services as a kind of managed utility dates back to the 1960s at least. Salesforce.com, founded in 1999, based its entire business model on the cloud, even if it didn't use the word at the time. Since then, we've seen a variety of takes on what came to be known as Software as a Service, or SaaS. That's now been supplanted by "the cloud," a term which refers to any number of apps that reside in huge banks of servers located far from the client.

Analyst Insight: Supplier segmentation is a critical foundational component for executing on your supply management strategies and for understanding and building value in the supply network. Supplier segmentation supports an end-to-end supply chain segmentation strategy. However, it must be aligned with downstream processes to ultimately deliver value to customers. Unfortunately, Gartner Supply Chain research finds two-thirds of organizations take a one-size-fits-all view to supplier relationship management, resulting in misaligned resources and little delivered value. - Mickey North Rizza, Gartner Supply Chain Research

Analyst Insight: Procurement and sourcing is a continuously evolving profession. A global Gartner Supply Chain study of 453 companies finds 51 percent of procurement and sourcing talent hired in the last three years was to satisfy short-term needs, with a focus on basic, intermediate and advanced procurement and sourcing skill sets. Procurement and sourcing hiring strategies for 2012 shifts to long-term needs and advanced skills requirements in the areas of SRM, supplier collaboration, performance management and analytics, and financial procurement. - Mickey North Rizza, Gartner Supply Chain Research