You can use data gathered from your devices and sensors during the manufacturing process to determine how to build the perfect product and to tell when your manufacturing process is going off the rails.

Moving voice to your data network can do your business a world of good in terms of overall cost, app integration, and data mining. But it's not something to be done lightly, so take these steps before rolling out voice over IP in production.

Security-as-a-Service is an emerging cloud resource. But, while new, it promises to be exactly what many midsize businesses need to effectively protect themselves.

Bottom Line: Campaigner offers numerous advanced features and a generous free trial period that lets you try out its email workflows, autoresponders, and marketing automation capabilities. It's definitely worth trying out, especially if you're interesting in buying an advanced email marketing tool.

Point-of-sale (POS) systems have moved into the cloud with great results for pricing, deployment, and even integration with other back-end systems. We test 10 top players to help you find what's right for you.

Bottom Line: ShopKeep offers the point-of-sale (POS) system features that most small businesses will want without overwhelming them; however, the cost of add-ons can add up.

Bottom Line: Chartio excels at building a powerful analytics platform that experienced business intelligence (BI) users will appreciate. Those new to BI, however, will find it very difficult to use.

Bottom Line: Microsoft Power BI gets our Editors' Choice award for its terrific data visualization features, smart design, and unmatched integration with the rest of the Microsoft Office suite.

Bottom Line: Domo isn't for newcomers but for companies that already have business intelligence (BI) experience in their organization. Domo's a powerful BI tool with a lot of data connectors and solid data visualization capabilities.

Bottom Line: Zoho Reports is an ideal choice for general business users who might not be experts in analytics software. It also comes as an affordable price.

Bottom Line: The Salesforce Einstein Analytics Platform is designed for customer, sales, and marketing analyses, although it can server other needs, too. Its powerful analytics capabilities along with its solid natural language querying functionality and a wide array of partners make it an attractive offering.

Bottom Line: If your business already uses SAP's HANA database platform or some of its other back-end business platforms, then SAP Analytics Cloud is a powerful, well-priced choice. But be warned that there's a steep learning curve and a noted dependence on other SAP products for full functionality.