A company's reputation rests on much more than the quality of the products that it makes.

Vendors "are seeing the cloud as the opportunity for the future and are looking at revenue models and thinking of offering a subscription-based service to reduce clients' CAPEX," according to Jagdish Rebello, senior manager for cloud and computer electronics at IHS. "Microsoft's doing that, Oracle's trying to do that, Google's doing that, and Salesforce.com is seeing explosive growth."

With the Jan. 1 U.S. Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) lot-level traceability deadline now behind us, many pharmaceutical companies are turning their attention to full drug serialization. DSCSA requires that manufacturers mark packages with a product identifier, serial number, lot number, and expiration date by 2017. In that period, highly regulated packaging and distribution processes must be changed; physical equipment must be procured and operationalized; enterprise-wide IT must be implemented; and end-to-end serialization testing with supply chain partners must take place well in advance of the deadline to allow time for any necessary adjustments. Given these multi-faceted complexities, three years is an aggressive implementation time frame.

The window to sell Western fuel oil to Asia is starting to close as demand for a limited fleet of supertankers to store cheap crude pushes freight rates to multi-month highs, shipping and trade sources said.

For more than 50 years, global production of plastic has continued to rise. Some 299 million tons of plastics were produced in 2013, representing a 4 percent increase over 2012. Recovery and recycling, however, remain insufficient, and millions of tons of plastics end up in landfills and oceans each year, according to Gaelle Gourmelon, communications and marketing manager at the Worldwatch Institute.

Tracking rail carts with GPS and cellular could bring value to the rail sector; however, penetration rates on rail carts are currently very low (globally less than 50,000 in 2014), and growth is not forecasted to be very strong over the next 5 years, or even the next 10, according to ABI Research. Therefore, for the time being at least, it looks like RFID will dominate this sector.

Globally, mobile technology has emerged as a primary engine of economic growth, stimulating enormous private-sector spending in both R&D and infrastructure, and profoundly changing daily lives - everywhere.