Think of the typical corporate merger as the meeting of two ocean liners. It's tough enough to combine the crews. But how do you mash together two engine rooms?

Google has dropped its cloud computing prices and other vendors are expected to follow suit, but the lower pricing may not be the key lure for attracting enterprises to the cloud.

For all the enthusiasm surrounding the government's move to the cloud - and there's no shortage - one prominent federal CIO is emphatic that cloud computing, for all its virtues, is no panacea for the government's technology challenges.

There is no shortage of software-as-a-service (SaaS)–based manufacturing enterprise resource planning software offerings nowadays, for almost any vertical manufacturing market segment. But while cloud and hosted solutions are routine for many types of business software across various industries, manufacturing businesses still express a lot of skepticism, uncertainty and concern about the applicability of cloud software to their business.

HighJump Software Inc., a vendor of supply-chain management software, has acquired Atlas Products International.

Arena Solutions, a provider of cloud-based applications for product lifecycle management, has developed a new tool for discrete engineering and manufacturing.

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.