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.

The United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has issued its official report on the Air Force's failed enterprise resource planning system implementation. The Air Force Expeditionary Combat Support System (ECSS) was supposed to be a "transformational" logistics program that would make the U.S. Air Force more efficient and effective. The goal of the program was to replace hundreds of legacy systems, some dating back to the 1970s. But, after nearly a decade of work by the system integrator, Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), and more than $1.1bn spent, the ECSS program was terminated in December 2012.