Editor’s note: Chris Jones is Executive Vice President, Marketing and Services at Descartes Are you saturated by all the cloud hype? Recently, a leading analyst firm published a report on cloud computing that listed 24 variations. It’s tough to name a vendor who does not claim they have a cloud offering. With all of the confusion, it’s hard to identify what part of cloud technology will really benefit logistics and other sophisticated ecosystems.
Chris Jones – Executive VP, Marketing & Services, Descartes Systems Group
I believe that community cloud has the potential to transform not only company performance but also industry performance. This claim may sound like a stretch, but there is history and some sound economics behind it. First, let’s start with the definition of community cloud. It addresses unique industry requirements, connects organizations with common business interests, leverages shared data, streamlines common business processes, allows organizations to create new shared business models and is delivered through a SaaS (Software as a Service) model. Community cloud is industry focused. Community cloud is versus enterprise or two-party technology. There is considerable mathematics, economics and technology to support the emergence of community cloud. Let me cite 4 cases. • Everyone is familiar with the “network effect”. A simple example is the telephone. Two phones have little value, but billions of phones connect the world and are the backbone of communications. • Anyone who took economics in college knows the concept of “diminishing returns” with scarce resources. But the technology world has proven that this concept can be turned into “increasing returns”. In increasing returns, the conflict between “guns and butter” goes away and more can be created as organizations and individuals adopt the ecosystem standards. W. Bryan Arthur published a paper in the HBR over 10-years ago that used Microsoft as an example. Today it would be Apple. • The Internet has leveled the playing field to allowing all members of a “community” to get electronically connected from large to small and local to global organizations or even individuals. • SaaS-based computing has enabled complex network-oriented solutions to exist outside the enterprise and scale to an ecosystem or even industry level. So why is logistics a perfect fit for community cloud? Let’s take a look at the fundamentals of logistics, the business of moving goods. It is a $3.4 trillion global industry with millions of geographically dispersed logistics organizations – large and small. Logistics has always been about companies working together - business processes are multi-party (meaning more than two) and many activities are ad hoc. Much of the information resides outside of the enterprise. Data is shared and leveraged. There is some degree of communication standardization. There are many nascent examples of community cloud. Cargo community systems were the first electronic logistics community facilitators. Messaging networks (aka VANs) have been prime examples of the value of connecting multiple organizations and moving data between them. Product information data pools serve the retail ecosystem standardizing critical multi-party information between retailers and suppliers. Shipment “load boards” are great examples of increasing revenue or decreasing costs for carriers and shippers looking to leverage community “arbitrage”. Content aggregators provide a critical, but overlooked community service, such as shipping schedules, that collects and standardizes the information used across the community members. The emergence of multi-party applications has shown that enterprise applications haven’t addressed the vast “white space” that exists between logistics organizations. Social networks have demonstrated the viral effect that can be achieved with cloud-based technology.