Your worst case scenario is finally happening. You’ve received the dreaded ‘EDI Compliance’ letter from your largest customer. You don’t use EDI now because you're ‘too small’, and even though you signed a contract that said you’d support electronic trading, you never thought the customer would follow through with it. Now what?

We’ve heard much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the potential impact of Amazon’s move into the industrial supply (MRO) business with its Amazon Supply (AS) site. What’s going to happen to all of those poor industrial distributors? Will they go the way of the buggy whip, typewriter, and bookstore, or will they survive the onslaught of the feared Amazon machine? Well, although it’s early and little is known of Amazon’s specific plans for this market, I’d like to offer a couple fearless predictions for your reading pleasure.

Those of us who have been around ecommerce for a few years can probably remember hearing or reading about the ‘next big thing’. Whether that next big thing was handwriting recognition software, the ‘netbook’, server virtualization, or internet TV, it’s been a little hit or miss. That’s to be expected; things move quickly in this hyperconnected world, and technology never stands still.