In the past 24 months the interest in cloud computing – a general term for software deployed via the Internet – has grown as a result of the economic downturn. Because manufacturers no longer have the luxury of lengthy implementations and face tighter budget restrictions, they are seeking solutions that provide faster time-to-value and lower cost of ownership.
While accessing physical computing resources and connections via the Internet is nothing new, the movement of more business applications, especially mission-critical ones, into the cloud is becoming more prevalent. This is difficult for many companies to fathom, but even large companies are now moving part of their application portfolios into the cloud.
Why would a company want to use cloud computing for their supply chain management applications? First, a brief understanding of cloud computing and the various delivery models for supply chain management is in order. Cloud computing refers to the infrastructure, applications and other capabilities that run over the Internet, outside of a company’s firewall, and that are accessible via a Web browser. Through cloud computing, supply chain management applications can be deployed through hosted, managed services and software as a service (SaaS) models.\
Source: Press Release
