Time to scrap your legacy I.T. systems. But how exactly should you go about it?

What has been the impact of cloud technology on the supply chain and logistics industry? Tom Boike, vice president of supplier management with UPS, offers a perspective.

IT departments need to watch out for business units or even individual workers going rogue and bypassing IT to go straight to the cloud.

Analyst Insight: For both B2C and B2B, cloud technology is nothing new, but for supply chains the adoption has assumed a more guarded pace. That is to be expected: supply chain professionals are accustomed to operating in a world built on legacy applications and bolt-on point solutions. The promise of the cloud had been elusive, but supply chain systems are beginning to take advantage of the business model changes afforded by cloud solutions. - Guy F. Courtin, Vice President, Research, SCM World

As companies go global in their operations, they need new solutions for managing risk that can traverse countries and link in thousands of worldwide suppliers. Cloud is coming to the rescue where internal systems can't. Here are three cloud supply chain niche solutions that are gaining traction, and why.

Gauging the size of the supply chain technology market is a problematic exercise"”determining what technology components to include and what to leave out, which companies to include and who to leave out.

Cloud adopters face serious risk in the next two years because of the strong possibility that their provider will be acquired or forced out of business, according to Gartner.