Cloud services are being adopted in businesses throughout the world mainly because of their ability to deliver affordable and flexible offerings to improve business processes.

Descartes Systems Group (News - Alert), a cloud services firm dedicated to the logistics industry, has unveiled Descartes Community, a cloud solution that allows customers to focus much more deeply on their daily business as well as find new ways to grow.

Offered as part of Descartes Logistics Technology Platform, this offering helps companies and individuals in logistics-intensive industries facilitate inter-enterprise business processes, enable members to gain a better understanding of their business partners' capabilities, search for new ones and engage in collaborative activities that improve individual company and industry performance.

Additionally, the solution allows organizations and customers to define their operational and electronic capabilities and roles. It provides industry-wide access and helps brings together the applications and content that are needed every day to make the best decisions across the logistics chain possible.

"Our customers are telling us that they need solutions that get them better connected to the organizations and individuals they work with every day and to be able to more easily reach across their industry to find and transact with new partners and do it in new ways," said Chris Jones, executive vice president Marketing and Services at Descartes, in a statement.

The company has also unveiled its Standard Messaging Format (SMF) communication protocol, free of charge for those wishing to connect to Descartes Global Logistics Network (GLN). With this free service, the company hopes to increase widespread adoption of the Descartes Community cloud services.

With over 35,000 connected parties, GLN is the world's largest multi-modal network. This powerful infrastructure gives members of the Descartes Community the flexibility to create the multi-party communications and processes that they need to extend their command of operations.

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