Articles by Andrew K. Burger

Cybercriminals are as gung-ho about perpetrating online fraud as financial institutions and governments are dedicated to preventing it. As long as people send private, sensitive information and transactions over computer networks, the prospect of identity (ID) theft and subsequent online fraud will loom large It's not so much the number of people w...

Industry participants and observers are looking for big things to happen in the smartphone space this year, as progress is being made in both technological and commercial realms The difficulties and challenges that lie ahead are considerable, however, certainly if the vision of converging "quad play" services that integrate fixed and mobile telecom...

2006 was a pivotal year for the smartphone industry, with significant technological developments and changes in industry practices and operation Handset manufacturers continued to accessorize the smartphone and churned out a seemingly limitless variety of models and styles, showing off cutting edge advances such as the delivery of text and multimed...

Change is the order of the day in the m-commerce market. New smartphones and other handheld digital devices are hitting the marketplace in a torrent, as media convergence accelerates the drive toward "quad play" devices and network services. The telecom and media industries are undergoing a fundamental restructuring, with new market entrants that are focused on bridging the gap between content origination and network distribution as the primary agents of change...

Coming off a record-setting year, momentum continues to build at the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) as it moves into 2007. As detailed in Part 1 of this two-part series, the ICE has become a leader and successful innovator in the field of exchange-based energy and commodities trading The Atlanta-based exchange last year carried out a series of si...

Organizations of all types are increasingly turning to business intelligence (BI) applications -- a combination of data mining, statistical, and numerical analysis and data visualization -- to better manage and make sense of the ever-growing amounts of data they are collecting Continuing the mantra of Part 1 of this two-part series, BI solutions ar...

New technological advances, as well as legal and regulatory changes, are tearing down long-standing barriers between industries As Part 1 of this three-part series notes, digital voice, data and multimedia content delivery operations are converging with both fixed and wireless telecommunications services....

The use of RFID technology in the retail industry has been increasing, albeit tentatively, and the debate over RFID in general continues unabated. Meanwhile, proponents are finding that RFID adoption is easier in the manufacturing sector and upstream in the supply chain, in areas such as asset tracking and inventory management, as well as security-related, government-driven applications, such as international air travel...

As more phones and other small-form handheld devices get "smarter," so does the potential for people to use them more often, and for many varied and different purposes. The number of mobile cell phone subscribers worldwide surpassed 1 billion in 2006, and technological innovation continues apace as time to market for new products continues to shrink...

Thanks to the increased processing power of today's microprocessors and significantly improved data access and storage technology, it has become easier than ever to apply some rather sophisticated statistical analyses to better understand both business processes and customer behavior However, the rapidly growing amount of data that businesses are c...

The Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) has earned a reputation as a leader and successful innovator in the field of exchange-based energy and commodities trading Having launched a string of new exchange and OTC (over-the-counter) traded energy derivatives contracts this past year, the ICE's total 2006 futures trading volume surpassed 2005's previous r...

In late November, AT&T's Sterling Commerce acquired Comergent, a competitor in the e-commerce/order hub management platform market, for US$155 million in cash The merger brought together two industry-leading companies, though they operated on different orders of magnitude. Sterling Commerce posted revenues of $490 million while Comergent's revenues...

With ongoing technological and process improvements in the alternative and renewable energy sectors -- and with concerns about energy sources, supplies and environmental degradation increasingly at the forefront of social and political issues -- energy and commodities have become a focal point for businesses, NGOs (non-governmental organizations), government, the broad public and the media...

It's taken decades and international cooperation among governments, agencies in the private sector, and a variety of multinational and local organizations, but a multibillion dollar global market has grown up around the issuance, verification and trading of CO2 (carbon dioxide) and GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions reduction credits With the ongoing d...

Indications are that 2007 will be a bumper year for the solar power and renewable energy industry, as was noted in Part 1 of this two-part series High oil prices, the war in Iraq and global climate changes have spurred growing concerns about U.S. energy policies, elevating the issue of corporate social and environmental responsibility from the boar...

Given growing public concerns about energy independence,security and climate change, U.S. states and the federal government are adopting legislation and offering incentives in support of the rapidly growing renewable energy and power industry, and California is playing a leading role The introduction of the California Solar Initiative (CSI) is set ...

Digital Insight, a provider of outsourced online banking services, in 2007 will begin offering its on-demand consumerInternet banking and business banking clientsEntrust's TransactionGuard, a real-time transaction monitoring and fraud detection service Entrust's solution is designed to helpsecurity administrators among Digital Insight's financial c...

Across the U.S., both consumers and industry have called on the government to build out an infrastructure for renewable energy sources following the latest run-up in gas prices. Part 1 of this two-part series on renewable energy reviews some of the plans industry participants have outlined to support various "green" power initiatives, along with some approaches to achieve success...

Some 450 leaders from the U.S. renewable industry's policy, financial and technology sectors assembled on Capitol Hill on November 29-30, meeting with members of Congress and government agency officials during the American Council on Renewable Energy's (ACORE) fifth annual national policy conference The event was clear evidence of the momentum surr...

Web services are improving supply chain and business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) network management. As companies such as IBM and Ariba develop better service-oriented architecture (SOA)-based Web services at the partner and customer end, providers such asArch Rock are pushing wireless Web services-enabled networking onto the shop floor and to previously inaccessible production locations, as noted inPart 1 of this two-part series...