If you’ve seen the latest issue of Manufacturing Business Technology (April 1, 2016), you were surely drawn to an article by Rootstock CEO Pat Garrehy on how manufacturing is being altered by the Cloud and other new technologies it is cultivating. According to Garrehy, “Conventional wisdom holds that as technology advances, the world gets smaller…Manufacturing firms are moving to cloud-based ERP systems to access large amounts of critical data in real time anywhere along their supply chains, scale operations up or down as needed, all at reduced costs.”

Garrehy goes on to project that “the ability to store and access critical data in the Cloud is enabling new technologies that promise to transform manufacturing even more and, in the process, allow firms of all sizes to access even more of the global economy.”

The ERP industry veteran argues that “before the cloud, small manufacturers were at a distinct disadvantage, lacking the financial and technology resources to compete in global markets. Many large manufacturers who already had a global presence invested heavily in on-premise ERP systems over the years in an effort to leverage data into business intelligence. Unfortunately, those legacy systems proved insufficient to the global challenges because of high operating costs, frequent customization, outdated hardware, limited functionality and limited access to data.

“Along came cloud computing, with its access to data and applications over the Internet in real time,” Garrehy states. But, that’s just the beginning, he ventures.

“We’ve seen how manufacturing has been transformed by cloud computing. However, the cloud itself is being transformed as it integrates into other new technologies, including mobile devices, the Internet of Things and soon, wearable devices.”

To read the entire article, head over to http://www.mbtmag.com/article/2016/04/how-cloud-and-new-technologies-are-transforming-manufacturing.