Editor’s Choices for Week Ending Jun 29, 2012

Article of the Week
Six Ways to Lower Your Technology/Application Debt (Big Fat Finance Blog)
Big Idea:  Rationalize your applications; eliminate software sitting on the shelf; virtualize your environment; consider open-source; transition to the cloud; modernize your application architecture.  These are all steps to eliminate your “application debt”.

Editor’s Choice Articles
Classroom Lectures Go Digital (NYTimes)
Big Idea:  The revamping of education continues as digital content starts to dominate online.  There is a balance between accredited institutions and the digital learning platforms like TED-Ed and Khan Academy.  It is also the balance between $50K/year and free!

Do You Have the Digital Leaders You Need? (HBR Blog Network)
Big Idea:  Is your company leadership highly digital?  Based on a study completed by Harvard Business Review, it is highly like that you leaders or your company would be what they consider “highly digital”.  How can you change the face of your organization and its digital understanding?

Hadoop pushes, pulls Big Data analytics into mainstream (Part Two) (SmartData Collective)
Big Idea:  Part 2 on Hadoop.  Interesting points related to the macro drivers of next generation BI and analytics.  Also two key drivers from a survey by Aberdeen: New analytic needs not well suited to existing data warehouse and growing number of data sources.

Cirro makes big data manageable with smart set of tools (GigaOm)
Big Idea:  Making Big Data easily consumable is a big problem.  Cirro is trying to fix that by providing easy to use tools for non-technical users who are comfortable with Excel and break the reliance of IT.