Analyst Insight: Not only is the supply chain market in the cloud growing, but a growing element in the portfolio is the supply chain network. Today, supply chain processes that call for collaboration such as transportation management, track and trace and procurement rely on the cloud to get the job done. But the supply chain network is a unique approach that facilitates complex multi-party supply chain processes and transactions. - Ann Grackin, CEO, ChainLink Research

Analyst Insight: Not too long ago, many supply chain professionals were skeptical of adopting a SaaS delivery model for their solutions. There was a hesitancy to move their solutions off premise, into the cloud and pay a subscription. How times have changed. Supply chain solution providers are all moving to the model or designing native solutions that are cloud-based. - Guy F. Courtin, Vice President & Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Over-the-top headlines and estimates of the size of the IoT market create more confusion and skepticism about hype than a real understanding of how big the market really is. There needs to be a framework for understanding IoT market size.

If you think the internet's busy now, just wait until next year. Gartner estimates there will be 6.4 billion connected devices in 2016, up 30 percent from this year.

After the town of Cary, N.C., installed a water meter system that automatically radios water usage to the public works department, it eliminated 10 meter-reading positions. The water resources group operates today with a smaller staff, thanks to the Internet of Things.

Tony Scott, U.S. CIO, says there is no safer place to store data than in the cloud.

Criminals go where they can do the most damage with minimal effort. It's why, for years, hackers targeted Windows rather than Macs - it was where the users, and in turn the data, were. And now we're seeing a steady migration from one platform to the next as popularity grows. Hackers moved from Windows to Apple's OS to mobile. Now, unsurprisingly, they are targeting the cloud.

You're probably getting desensitized by now to the ever-lengthening list of data breach headlines which have saturated the news for the past couple of years. Targeted attacks, persistent threats and the like usually end up with the hackers capturing sensitive IP, customer information or trade secrets. The result? Economic damage, board level sackings and a heap of bad publicity for the breached organization. But that's usually where it ends.