Analyst Insight: The complexity of modern supply chains introduces a wide variety of risks into business operations. Supply chain professionals primarily worry about logistics and planning challenges, but a host of legal exposures can come into play as well. The management of these vendor risks typically falls to legal and compliance stakeholders, but ultimately impacts supply chain activities. This creates a unique need for integration between solutions supporting risk and supply chain management. – David Houlihan, Principal Analyst at Blue Hill Research

With a tentative agreement in place between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), the 7-month-long West Coast port crisis has come to an end. What comes next is the final body count - what percentage of GDP shrank because of the slowdown? What was the impact on the trade deficit? Who got hit hardest, and just how hard? Then what? There may be a collective sigh of relief in the air, but can things really go back to normal? Should they?

The top five events causing disruption to supply chains in 2014 were Typhoon Halong in western Japan with a revenue impact of more than $10bn, severe flooding in Long Island, New York, with a revenue impact of more than $4bn, Typhoon Rammasun in China and Vietnam, which caused a revenue impact exceeding $1.5bn, the Taiwan gas explosions and their $900m impact, and the Intel hazardous chemical spill in Arizona, which also had a revenue impact that topped $900m.

What does it take to overcome the logistics challenges of serving customers in emerging markets?

In 2014, organizations were caught off guard by the increase in advanced threats targeting vulnerabilities within business-critical applications running on SAP platforms. Everything from malware being loaded up on RFID devices and being inserted into the manufacturing process, to high-risk "denial of service" vulnerabilities are challenging organizations to re-think their current approach to protecting critical data.