| We all know that shipping connects the globe. From goods, to people, to energy, shipping is truly the engine of global trade. But we can’t afford to be complacent. We need to make sure that we are even more efficient as part of the logistics chain. Charterers are examining every aspect of this area for both environmental impacts and for efficiency- both time and money. If we aren’t performing to the highest levels, someone—perhaps an Amazon or an Alibaba—will. We often describe our industry as being fragmented. This isn’t efficient. How about this for an idea: connecting our maritime transportation network to gain greater success? In the future, the best companies won’t act like single organizations, unconnected from one another. Instead, they’ll work as interconnected, agile business networks that operate far more efficiently and responsively than companies today. These networked companies will be the new leaders in the global economy. And they’ll do it all on the strength of their information systems. For the past thirty-five years, enterprise software applications focused on basically one thing: automating processes within a single enterprise. They weren’t designed to work across constellations of companies operating together as global trading communities. Then, the cloud changed everything. The superior economics of cloud computing were already abundantly clear. But when it came to supply chain, cloud went a step further by creating entirely new methods to share information between organizations that simply were not possible with traditional “license and install” software. The economic reality is that the supply chain is not a chain—it’s a network. And business networks must be flexible and global. Cloud gives companies the power to automate processes and share data across multiple enterprises in real-time, allowing them to take their operations to the next level. So maybe the outcome of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” is greater success for the first global industry! Keep optimizing, Carleen | 
