Small to mid-sized companies are better positioned than large corporations to take advantage of cloud-based solutions because they have not made big investments in enterprise systems, says Yogesh Pathak of Technoforte. The supply chain is one of many areas where cloud solutions promise to change the game, Pathak says.

More than eight million building management systems (BMS) will be integrated with some form of Internet of Things (IoT) platform, application or service by 2020, according to an ABI Research report. However, like many suppliers in established markets today, commercial building management system vendors face both opportunities and threats when navigating the emerging IoT ecosystem.

IoT generates a tremendous amount of data - much more than people generate manually with their keyboards and cameras. And the volume of IoT data being generated will continue to increase at an exponential pace. How can companies extract the maximum value from that data? How should they think about it?

What's the difference between the terms "on demand," "in the cloud" and "software as a service"? Mike Joseph, director of business development with LeanLogistics, provides the answers.

In 2004, Sun Microsystems revealed a radical plan to shake up the computing industry. It would build a series of large data centers and sell access to the computers inside them for $1 per hour.

The transition to "cloud also" or "cloud first" is well under way for manufacturers around the globe, according to survey results from International Data Corporation. In fact, in the United States, 41 percent of manufacturing respondents indicated they are accessing IT resources via the public cloud, based on the IDC Global Technology and Industry Research Organization IT Survey, 2014.

Analyst Insight: The market's understanding of cloud solutions is maturing. We are steadily - and correctly - moving away from what the cloud is to focus on what it can mean for our businesses. For many, what it means now is an opportunity to reduce capital expenditures and free up IT resources. This will change as we look less at whether cloud solutions can do the same things as on-premises and focus on what they can do differently. - Scott Pezza, Principal Analyst at Blue Hill Research