Slashdot Mirror
What's The Difference Between A CIO And A CTO?
an anonymous coward asks: "I'm a general manager at a software company assigned the task to set up a proposal for a more scalable management structure. I've been researching how several other companies did the restructuring when they became too large for the traditional model but I ran into one strange bit: CIOs and CTOs. Some companies have neither, some have one of these and some companies have both. I can't find a pattern regarding size or focus of the companies, since very similar companies sometimes have different structures. It gets stranger when you figure out what they do: at some companies the CIO doesn't have much to do with actual technology but at other companies the CTO even reports to the CIO! So my questions: what are the 'traditional' roles for the chief information officer and the chief technology officer? And to who do they report, the COO or directly to the president/CEO?"
CEO: Find ways to get lots of money for the company. Hire and fire people on a whim. Drink, drink, drink. Spend all of that money in stupid ways.
President: (yes, I know not a C, but more important than everyone else) Hire and fire people with good reasons. Keep the CEO from drinking. Spend that money on smart things.
The rest of the C*O's: Look pretty. Make sweeping proclomations based on the latest and greatest fad. Spend lots of money on stupid things. Attempt to get people hired and fired based on their whims. Drink with the CEO.
I discovered that my company tries to hire high profile people as C*O's, pay them a shitload of money, then hope that investors will throw more money at us because we have such 'important' people working for us.
Having a product, or a plan just isn't imporant to them, and I estimate one more year before we close up shop and the investors start pulling munitions out of their gun cabinets.
I know that technology people aren't supposed to be able to speak English, but I offer this nonetheless. CEO is not an acronym, it is not not an abbreviation, it is an initialism. There is a thing called a dictionary. It has a list of words and their meanings. Check it out!
A CTO's function is to provide technical vision and direction to the organization. Fundamentally this needs to be a position only one down from the CEO (who is the final arbiter/decision maker). A CIO's function is to make sure that the internal/external information technology infrastructure works, and will scale as the needs of the company scales. This person should report to the COO if there is one, or president if there is one. The CTO should NEVER report to the CIO, the CIO may report to the CTO, but that would be a distraction. A CIO is by nature/need quite conservative with regards to technology, and quite skeptical. A CTO needs to be somewhat out there in technology, specifically looking at things that might or might not work. Their job is to figure out what has the highest probability of being useful for the company to pursue.
Of course, with the political landscape of senior management in a constant state of flux, jokeying for position, none of the management organization may be fixed in stone. Many very poor management chains have existed, and they tend to be implemented not on need, but on political reality.
The guy who lives in the camen islands and doesn't come to work every day :-)
Have a look at What's the difference between a CIO and a CTO? There is a lot at this site that can help you figure things out...
...CI,CIO.
(Couldn't resist!)
Authentication based on IP address sucks as well. Some type of login or certification authentication process would be more appropriate in this day and age of firewalls and proxy servers. Your university could solve the problem fairly easily by setting up transparent web proxies before the traffic goes out to the net. Then just give the remote sites the IP addresses of the proxies. Sure, then everyone on the campus can get to that site, but like I said.. authentication based on IP address is stupid. Browser certificates would be a much better way to control access to resources that a library uses.
...is the main difference.
More seriously, they're just titles and the exact meaning varies depending on the company. Just as the title "developer" varies.
From my perspective (and apparently that of many of our clients), a CIO deals with current infrastructure of a company, while a CTO evaluates technologies for future deployment in the company. Both have their well defined roles, though the deliverables vary considerably - a CIO needs to deliver on performance, while a CTO needs to deliver on vision.
You aren't remembered for doing what is expected of you
I agree. At the companies I've worked for, the CTO was always a technical visionary for the hardware/software/marketing/customer support groups.
CIO has always just been the lead for the IT group.
i.e. = id est (it is)
e.g. = exempli grata (for example)
--
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
I think this can be generalized a bit: Your CIO runs IS and your CTO rus R&D. Now, there should be a close working relationship between these departments but they also need clear boundaries.
New media golly gee whiz bang internet moguls call their flunkies CTOs while old school fat bastard white guys call theirs CIOs. It's that simple.
Ok here's the difference in a nut shell.
CIOs tend to be the business end and are in charge of the organization's overall IT strategy in terms of SLAs (service level agreements) and execution of vision.
CTOs are the chief architects of the organization's technical side and ultimately make the choices about what infrastructure the organization will use to achieve the vision set forth by the CIO.
I'm at the management level and I'm tasked with the organization of resources to achieve the vision the CIO is steering and the CTO architect more or less.
Thanks my take.
PRIME - Indivisible by anything but ME!
What the hell is that? A Chief Obfuscation Officer? If yes, I gues I found my niche ;)
--
Slashdot didn't accept your submission? hackerheaven.org will!
As a result, sometimes they're co-equal or the one is missing -- if you primarily use shop-control and commercial accounting software, you might have a CTO with a small band of robotics programmers (though if your successful, a CIO will soon be needed). OTOH, a CIO might farm the CTO role out to IBM or someone.
I'm not sure there is a hard and fast rule. It strikes me that a CIO is a more pure "management" position, with a larger strategic role in general business management. A CTO seems to be more focused with technology strategy -- ie, now that we have our business IT strategy, which technologies are we going to use to develop it?
CTO seems like a smart position to have; it lets the CIO focus on business and management and less on whether you want Solaris or Linux. The only skepeticism I have is if its not just a little bit of excessive delegation, but I have yet to meet a CIO with any decent understanding of technology.
Dealing with technology as they do, the CTO, while climbing to the top, has had to make more blood sacrifices to SCSI, PIO, LUN and the various other mischevious entities which live within a computer. These entities must be coaxed and appeased into working together, and when proper gifts and offerings are made, they will interact in amazing ways, and prevent the smoke from escaping the PC.
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Dissenter
Dissenter
"There is no knowledge that is not power."
CCO Central Command Officer :)
This is the guy who works with all the other C?Os so that the CEO dosn't have to spend all his day in meetings with all the C?Os
CBO... Centeral BS Officer... In charg of lying to the employees.
CMO Mimic This is the guy who repeates what the CEO said right after he said it to the people he did not say it to but were simply in the room at the time and did hear it...
CBO This is the guy in charg of the bubble gum.. most busnesses don't have one of thies.. His job is to make the secretarys happy.. bring them coffie and bubble gum...
As you'll note the stereotypical secretary chewing bubblegum dosn't seem to exist unles you have a CBO...
I don't actually exist.
Everyone should report to the CFO :)
:) CEO reports to the stock holders who report to the Illuminati...
[This should be dubblely true of "DotComs" who tend to spend thousands on BS when they havn't made a dime]
[Many allready gave sereous answers so I'm giving the silly ones]
CTO reports to God CIO reports to Satan
The CFO reports to RMS..
(I'm just wondering how many CFOs and CPAs prefer free software just for a TCO issue?)
I don't actually exist.
That is exactly the way that I understood the roles to work.
CIO - Business person with technology knowledge
CTO - Technology person with business knowledge
CTO reports to CIO.
Just my three cents.
CTO - Lord of the programmers.
CIO - Lord of the network operations people.
1. A million or so
2. A few thousand shares of stock (which are now worth much less)
3. A toupee
The CIO is in charge of Information, in whatever vague form it is. The CTO is in charge of the technology, whatever that means.
As for companies that have both, the CTO is in charge of the databases, but the CIO is in charge of the information in the databases.
Strange, yes, but management is designed for massively parallel, redudant, overpaid, underutilized positions the higher up you go.
Baz "It's a Hot Cut" Quux
(PS - I added the extra syllable back to "hinderance" - your rube dialect seems to be slipping, Mr. Joiner...)
--
Well where I work our CIO mostly makes bad technology decisions, ignores the input of his employees, sets unreasonable timetables for good ideas so they end up being executed poorly, and has generally done his best to ruin the reputation of the campus wide IT deptartment.
A few months ago it was decided that campus wide DHCP would be a good thing, so he told the sysadmins to do it. However he also forbade them from telling anyone else about the plan (ie the two dozen other admins on campus that don't report to the CIO) ya see most every department at my university has it's own small IT dept, mainly because when we started to computerize many many moons ago the campus wide IT dept was unwilling/unable to provide any type of support for all these new PC's popping up. Anyway our CIO didn't allow his people to communicate with the other admins around campus about what was going on so they didn't know about the 6 other DHCP servers running around campus. Nor did they realize that most of the online databases the library subsribes to authenticate based on IP, and that for some of those the license only applies to the computers physically in the library so when our public workstations started getting random IP's databases broke. Same thing with our networked circulation database, each of the book processors account it linked to the machines IP address, you can only use your account from your workstation. So naturally that broke in a big damn hurry. This was the first big project campus wide IT had tackled since the uni hired a CIO. The point of us creating the CIO position was to improve communications in the campus IT communities and improve central control, so far it's backfired. Communications suck worse than ever because of his policies, and the smaller IT depts around campus are nearly in revolt. We solved our IP auth problems by IP masqing all our workstations through one of our linux servers and giving our vendors it's IP for auth purposes, we do our own DNS and mail along with moving all the library's online resources to our own webserver (also a linux box) pretty much all we use campus IT for is our WAN link to the outside world. Our CIO sucks. We don't have a CTO, but if we did I'm sure he'd suck too.
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
CTO is more of a role in a software or hardware company who is reponsible for the technology issues and in many cases can also be the chief architect or some such fancy nomination. CIO provides Management information to take decisions about business. A CIO is a must in all companies esp non software who is responsible for running the EDP or MIS operations (as they are called) and abstracting that information for the top management to enable them to take decisions. A non software/hardware/tech company does not need a CTO. But software/hw/tech companies will need someone who will provide technical direction. Many times the COO/CEO herself is providing that direction and in that sense is the CTO/CEO such as Big Bill, Steve Jobs?, etc.
O this learning! What a thing it is - William Shakespeare
You forget that if the CEO is MIA you better talk to the FBI asap, or your company will be fubar pdq, and your competition will ROTFL ...
;-)
(and yes, I too have seen too much "Good Morning Vietnam"
BTW: What's a COO? Chief Operations Officer? What does a COO do?
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
My impression has always been that IT companies should have a CTO and a non-IT companies should have a CIO.
But. . . these are just silly corporate titles and their relevance all boils down to how willing either are to listen to the people who do the actual work.
"So is the BSD licence even more 'free' (than GPLv2)? Yes. Unquestionably." --Linus Torvalds (TinyURL.com/2vugzl)
Very well put.
I think your only accurate statement is that they "hire people that DO know what they are doing." After that, I think you get stuck in some pretty sweeping generalities based on whatever experience you have.
It has been my experience that CIOs serve as a valuable interpreter between techies and non-techies. Furthermore, they have the clout and respect to be the champion that technical people need on the business side of the organization.
I'm sorry you've had such a bad time with CIOs, but your brush is too broad.
My company has a "Evil Genius" title.
Do you have a speech impediment? There are people that can help.
I can pronunce any combination of letters. Besides, a "word" is just a group of letters. If it's not an English word, then maybe it's a Uhzbeckistanian word. Do you know all the world's words?
Take "angjf." It is pronounced like "AYNG-jif."
Take "hnrgb." It is pronounced like "HNERG-uh."
I rest my case.
P.S. to moderators: all though this comment doesn't address the original story, it is germane because it addresses an earlier post. thank you.
No comment at this time
I'm affaid that Merriam-Webster would disagree with you on this point.
Main Entry: acronym
Pronunciation: 'a-kr&-"nim
Function: noun
Etymology: acr- + -onym
Date: 1943
: a word (as NATO, radar, or snafu) formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term
No comment at this time
And to who do they report, the COO or directly to the president/CEO?"
The word in question should have been spelled "whom."
Thank you.
The Deputy Grammar Nazi
No comment at this time
Another way of looking at it is perhaps to see the CTO as involved with corporate profit centers and the CIO as involved with corporate cost centers. I'm in a small company where I chose to become CTO instead of CIO simply because we're aiming to advance new technology and sell it as products and services, however I'll be general head of technology and could easily have chosen either title. So, in that sense, it really is somewhat arbitrary.
Good question, though! I'm glad to see this kind of a question asked on Slashdot.
"Man has always been his own most vexing problem." --Reinhold Niebuhr, "The Nature and Destiny of Man"
CIO: Chief Information Officer knows the (business) needs of the company. ICT is considered to be a service with company performance as goal. The CIO does not communicate with technical guys very often. The CIO is focusses on _business_ needs - company profit in performance and costs supported with an ICT solution to the problem.
CTO: Chief Technology Officer knows about all projects within the company at technical level. He does not define the requested service, although he communicates feasibility, performance, technical problems with the CIO. The CTO also does study for new technologies, to be used in new projects. The CTO is focussed at the technical face of ICT
So in this company, the CIO and CTO actually do have different task
Bizar technology?
Having worked for various companies (where the CIO reports to COO, CFO, CEO, and where the CIO was the owner) I feel that the CIO should never report to anyone lower then the CEO. As a case study of what not to do: in one company the CIO could not get the necessary support that was needed to run the IT department because he reported to the CFO.
Not if he was speaking specifically about Novell.
As in "my CIO makes me use outdated shitty software, that is, Novell."
basically
fuck
basically
fuck
;)
--
"I think there is a world market for, maybe, five computers." __ IBM Chairman, 1943 __
This is actually correct. This is what i've seen everywhere i've worked. Basically, to add to the comment, at dot coms, the CTO typically does the development side, and the CIO typically is like IT department, and making sure that the CTO has everything in place for deployment.
--
"I think there is a world market for, maybe, five computers." __ IBM Chairman, 1943 __
The CIO is a politically connected guy who reports to the CEO and is responsible for all IT at the company. "All IT" would emcompass a common architecture for the company, common data formats, common platforms - i.e. everything works together and it makes the CEO look good.
CEO, CIO, CTO, etc. are not acronyms. They're just abbreviations. An acronym is an abbreviation that also fits within the phonotactic structure of a language so as to be pronounceable (e.g. "SHIT" for "Specialized High-Intensity Training[?]" or "INDOT" for "Indiana Department of Transportation").
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
CIO: essentially just the head accountant for the cost-center that is the IT department.
CTO: that person who is in charge of all things "Internet" based, e-commerce mainly.
Oversimplified? Yep. What I truly hate, is when the CIO/CTO reports to the CFO. What a waste. Nothing like having your budgets cut because an accountant doesn't understand the slightest bit about your job.
with those that brand the CIO as a management goon and the CTO as someone who might actually understand the technology being used. Most of the companies that I worked for have been small (100 or so people) so they tend to only have one or the other with the title depending on what issue of Wired the CEO last read. They're normally fairly useless people. It does, however, bring up an interesting point: most techies that are promoted to management aren't that good at it. Most managers who are brought in or transferred into the CIO/CTO position suck just as bad at it. I'm not sure where that leaves us but....
CIO delivers BUSINESS solutions - planning, methods, process's, a CIO is not involved with the technology. CTO delivers Technology solutions - he delivers the product to match what is outlined by a CIO a CTO and CIO should be equal levels, both should report to a CEO, not each other.
I believe it's a sign of the importance of information and technology that a business might have use for both a CIO and CTO.
... who can step back and say, 'let's partner or purchase' and not build. Many good wheels out there do not need to be re-invented. In my mind that is a CIO. She's the same person who might say, "hey we've got this terrific IT capability, can we turn it into a profit center".
As a practical matter I see companies like CDW, Comdisco and UAL charging their CIO's with strategic directions for technology and information. The CTO's appear to be participating in that vision, but primarily executing on it.
The fact is, so many businesses are building systems and applications that already exist there is a real need for someone far enough away from the 'programming' side of things
I'm not saying a CTO can't or won't do these things... but I can't tell you how many times I've heard those folks say, "I could build that, why buy it" where that decision is bad business.
http://www.hiredinsight.com
www.hiredinsight.com
there's also interesting stuff at http://www.cio.com/
rr
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
Eric Livingston
Chief Technology Officer
Commerce One Global Services
www.commerceone.com
Please Rate my comment (and help support Fre
I wonder if Linux is still a banned OS, even the unix admins had to use a locked down version of NT as the *cough* IT department *cough* even went as far as to try and impliment secure card readers for the LAN to remove Linux.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
I once worked for a company in which the CIO delivered news to the company president/CEO that he wasn't keen on hearing (that being "you can't set up a good ecommerce system without updating the back-end stuff first"). The CEO wanted ecommerce now, so he hired a "Chief Knowledge Officer" who was above the CIO. That was a mistake that ended up costing him close to $7M and set his ecommerce project back almost a year in the end.
The moral of this story is: if it looks like the company doesn't need more than one CxO, it probably doesn't and you should stay clear.
----
----
"I used to listen to Null Device before they sold out."
yup coo=$"Chief Operations Officer"
Information wants to be free like speech wants to be free, not like we want beer to be free.
I think the biggest difference is just the job title. It is nothing more than a title. It is what you call the guy in charge of the computer department. Another title for this position is Head of Information Services. Any good size company has someone in charge of the overall corporate network computing infastructure and decides what software to use, what servers to use and what software the employees have on the desk top. He oversees the team that deploys the company network solution, manages site licenses etc. A title is not cast in stone for the person in this position.
The truth shall set you free!
Perhaps "whatever TLA or TLI you can name" would have been more correct ;>)
Truthfully, I think they would get rid of the CIO distinction if they could find a way of doing it without making it look like a demotion. The CECO is only a nickname we gave him so he didn't have to feel left out of the alphabet game.
From what I've seen in other companies, though, it all comes down to personal taste. Are you working primarily with information (a large Mainfram with a bunch of workstations [this seems to be a dying breed]) or mostly technology (a fair number of individual servers setup to handle specific tasks [i.e. Printing, Data, File Sharing, etc.])?
...and every company needs a Chief IS Troll.
Well, yes, but, allow me to redefine:
In a company WITHOUT an engineering department, the CTO supports and/or manages all the technology-related decisions within the company and coordinates technology issues with all outside entities.
However, when a company has an engineering department (that is, the company makes and/or sells products that contain hardware and/or software), the CTO is responsible for all technology that engineering is NOT responsible for. This generally includes things like infrastructure (phones, LAN, etc.) and the services provided by and on top of that infrastructure.
The CIO is responsible for INFORMATION, no matter if it is in digital form or not. He is expected to work closely with QA (especially if the company is ISO-9000 certified), Finance, Sales and Marketing, to ensure their communication and reports are accurate, timely and comprehensive.
To put it another way, the CIO is the keeper of all the "Business Processes" the company uses to do whatever it is that it does. The CIO will seldom create or mandate any process, but he will be responsible for evaluating, implementing and monitoring the services and tools needed to implement all such processes, usually at the behest of other corporate officers or board members.
Thus, the CIO will have strategic importance at the corporate level. In a sense, he has to know just what the company can or can't do, why or why not, and what it will take to make changes. He will consult on the changes, but will generally follow the direction of the CEO/COO and the company's Board of Directors.
The CTO is somewhat less strategic: He typically is responsible for providing the technical services needed to implement the technical portions of the processes the CIO is responsible for. The CTO is also responsible for having the "Big Picture" of all technology, both new and emerging, that has the potential to help or harm the company. In this sense he is also strategic: His advice and recommendations on technology issues affecting the company must be the best available.
Corporate officer titles are NOT job titles! They are a very different thing, in the legal sense. Corporate Officers are typically employees, with employee positions (President, Vice President, etc.), though Corporate Officers may also be drawn from members of the corporate Board of Directors. They are always named and confirmed by the corporate Board of Directors.
A Corporate Officer bears responsibility far beyond that of an employee: He is considered to be legally RESPONSIBLE for the behavior of the company, and the signature of a corporate officer is often required when certain commitments are being made or negotiated. For example, a Corporate Officer (employee or not) must sign most corporate SEC and IRS filings.
Now let's take another look at CIO and CTO: They are NOT just "managers" of technology and information: They are responsible for charting and maintaining the company's course, and the strategies related to following that course, within their domains of responsibility.
The existence of the CIO and CTO titles is direct proof of the importance of information and technology to modern business: It is now strategic, and worthy of far more attention than a CEO or COO alone can provide.
My company has both a CTO and a CIO. As of monday I will be the CTO, the other guy got fired. I report to the CIO. The difference is that the CIO handles all information, not just technical stuff (this includes marketing and the like). I handle all technical details, managing programmers, how to implement systems and the like (im also the system administrator, but that is because this is a small company). Basically the CIO does not have much technical knowledge, therefore the CTO is the person who actually makes the technical decisions.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
IMHO, a CIO is the officer in an old economy company who controls how information (payables and receivables, inventory, yada) is presented to the CEO and COO and board. A CTO is an officer in a new economy company who determines how the company will move forward in developing its own technology to sell. THus, old economy companies would not need a CTO, since they probably buy versus build. In some cases, however, old economy companies do build their own and should probably have CTOS to talk about things like platforms.
Francine Hardaway, Ph.D. "It's not what happens to you; it's how you come to it." http://www.stealthmode.com
They are both corporate officers at the same level as the COO but slightly under the COO and the CEO.
In my last 3 jobs, the CTO and CIO are nearly identical but their scope is different. The CTO will be making decisions on the corporate technical infrastructure, while the CIO deals more with the soft side, like databases, information services offered within and outside the company, etc. If we were eBay, our CTO would be choosing the next server farm while the CIO would be managing the information architecture of the auction website, user databases, etc.
Pedro
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
This answer is right on.
They have had to justify why they should report to a CEO rather than the CFO
Well, the history of IT is that it started in the accounting department (which had the most processes to automate: accounts recievable, payroll, spreadsheet what-ifs). So most of the older IT guys were Finance/Accounting types, and it probably made sense for them to report ultimately to the CFO.
I guess you'll have to ask them...
About 20 G's a year
I wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition. (evil tone) Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
I've worked at over 20 companies. I have never seen a CTO be other than an obstruction. Of course there are exceptions. I'm glad you are one.
Mostly agree except: CIO is interested in all information no matter how done. CTO is interested in technology which is not limited to information. After all technology is used to for other things than computers ;-)
If you see a CTO who is underneath the CIO in the corporate heirarchy, *RUN*. This means that the company has not adequately thought out the roles for its managers and is thus probably run by a process of backstabbing and who-you-know rather than via ability and execution. Those are *NOT* happy places to work.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Just because it's called a CIO or CTO (or whatever other TLA you can name), doesn't mean that it's the same 'job' at any company; the only things that would be in common as such to make sure the company has the right PR is that the person is very high up in the ranks and makes some of the most important decisions regarding technology choices in the company. There's no law or standard that states that a company has to have certain positions labeled and filled -- the only thing the gov't cares about is if they pay their taxes.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
If the CTO should report to the CIO, but instead needs to talk to the COO, that would have to be OK:d by the CEO, or somebody made a BOO-BOO...
Sorry.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Yeah, dude. Who needs to know what to do with all that money anyway or who the customers might be or where the company's ganna be in five years?
Those parasites are there to keep yutzes like you employed, though I wonder why...
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
My company has 3 CPOs! But I can't figure out how they are all able to fit into that one gold-coloured suit.
Perhaps a link to the Acronym Finder will prove useful to someone...
--
Unselfish actions pay back better
I guess it would depend on the size of the company. Obviously a large company you have to set up a good chain of command, so everyone isn't running just to one person.
However, the company I work for, I suppose some would call it a dotcom startup, it seems that everyone, including the CTO and VPs, including myself, working only as a graphic designer, reports directly to the CEO(who is also President).
So in a situation with a small company, I can understand this, and it may even be a strength, as in such a situation, the CEO can get his goals directly to the people who will help create them, instead of filtered down through the ranks as will happen in most larger companies.
-Julius X
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
Damn that was too simple, yet it was right on the money and perfect. Saves on the virtual trees too. ;-P
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
Building a scalable organization is an interesting problem. As an organization gets larger it beccomes harder and harder to manage. Creating a CTO or CIO runs the danger of creating a turf-dom that the CTO/CIO will feel obliged to defend with idiocy like "Thou shalt only use Winblows 2.1 and Microsoft Powerpoint".
But clearly there has to be some decision making process regarding technology standards associated with shared service like network operations and centralized data needed by accounting etc.
I think the answer is to make technology operations a service organization with a scope restricted to only systems shared amoung business units. After all, in a business organization the purpose of technology is to serve the business.
I think that the key principles are:
1. Push as much decision making down into the organization as possible.
2. Minimize the number of rules.
3. Build cross functional organizational elements that are responsible for the success of a business operation.
A centralized CTO is fine, so long as he can't say "You must buy only Comcrap Presarios which we then preload our special locked down image of OS/2 that everyone has to use".
Eeye even has a CHO, "Chief Hacking Officer"! Now, what's that?
-- To bloody go where no man has gone before.
Technology companies, in the wider economy, are relatively rare. They are the companies whose primary business is innovation, which add value through creating new kinds of things. Even the big, obvious 'technology companies' aren't really technology companies considered as a whole (although divisions within them may be): Sun, IBM, HP, for example, though they do develop new technology, fundamentally add value through their knowledge of their customer base and its needs; innovation supports this, it doesn't lead it. So here again I would expect the information function to be senior to the technology function.
It's in less established companies, or smaller specialist companies which concentrate on innovation, that I would expect the technology function to be genuinely senior to the information function.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
I'm Technical Director (which is CTO in UK-Speak) because I
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Don't get too hung up in the computer biz. Technology is useful for more than just pushing information around. And not all information needs to be treated by technology.
It doesn't take technology to decide who sees what information (one of the most important decisions).
Or think of a biotech company: There's alot of technology on the bio-side.
Right. But, more pragmatically, and with greater bitterness over having to deal with a CIO:
A CTO is a real engineer who knows what he's doing. He's the last word on technology in the company. Typically he's the head of the division responsible for Product Development.
A CIO is someone with a CCNA (at best) whose responsibility it is to make sure that his customers (i.e. the rest of the people working for the company) remain productive as a result of his products (i.e. networks, email, software, phones, hardware) BUT thinks it is his job to make sure that people who know better than he does are not permitted to use software, hardware, phones, email or networks not administered and approved by him or his little empire. In this context "administered" means that his team grows every time you have a problem, because he can get more budget and resources, and "approved" means "what he understands without having to learn anything new". This requirement for "approval" has been traced to the sole cause for survival of Novell in the last five years.
To these ends he will resort to creative interpretation of license agreements, "accidental" disabling of accounts, and I have even heard whispers of intentional virus plants... Threatening company-wide emails in upper-case are not unknown when breaches of the approval or administration process are suspected. Typically inhabits an office with frosted-glass windows so that nobody can see that he reads the newspaper (tabloid: takes five hours)and surfs the net for porn all day. The CEO likes it that nobody can see the CIO.
In short, a CIO is a BOFH without the IQ.
A CTO clearly has a higher ASCII value.
As about half of the 86 comments posted so far have said, there's no traditional definition of whats the difference between CTO and CIO. There's also traditionally no difference between IS and IT. I've worked for companies with IS departments and companies with IT departments. One was an IT department with a CIO, one was an IS with a CTO, and I've seen plenty with those switched. I'm presently working in a company where the CIO is responsible for the internal IT department AND the external Customer Service department which are two completely separate functions, except that they relate to computers. I've seen CIO used a lot more than CTO. My guess is the decision to create the CTO title was based on those companies who have internal and external information technology needs and were too different for one person to concentrate on (or was too much work for one person to work on). Whatever you do, however, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT get caught up in defining your Title before defining the role. Define the role first, give it a title that sounds snazzy, then get on with your life. No two CIOs/CTOs are exactly alike.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
In the company I work for, the CIO is in charge of the widespread IT decisions, which also includes things like phoneswitches and building wiring, electrical power redundancy, and other offshoots of perhaps the traditional roles IT managers play.
The CTO is the lead developer--essentially the person whom all other developers ultimately report to. He is responsible for conducting product demos, interacts heavily with leaders of other businesses who are also customers, and does solve bugs himself.
"In individuals, insanity is rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." -Nietzsche
A big company with both old and new economy components may have both a CIO and a CTO.
A company with only a CIO is probably not a technology company per se (i.e. they do not directly sell technology products or services to customers, but technology is only incidental to their business).
At companies where the business _is_ the technology, the CTO generally has the prominent role. At most other businesses, the CTO, if one is present, is a technology person with business experience who does is basically the uber architect for tech projects within the company and fights with/argues with/bitchifies him or herself to the CIO.
A CIO is generally in charge of information systems (IS) and IT deployment within an enterprise, perhaps also with the groups in charge of integrating or connecting that to other systems.
In reality, I have met very smart and very stupid CTOs. But while I haven't interacted with very many CIOs, those I've had any experience at all with have universally been PHBs in the worst possible way.
Mind you, my experience is mostly in the software industry, with companies in the range of 20 to 500 people (i.e. small and mid-small sized companies). Also, you have to realize that basically a company can create roles as they want and asign people to those roles. If the CTO is too smart and the CEO can't deal with him because he understands nothing about what's going on, he might hire a CIO who's a complete moron and make the CTO report to him. Then if the CTO isn't a complete loser he'll quit and say fuck this shit.
Anyhow, to answer your question:
CIO almost always means a very senior IT person reporting direct to the CEO.
CTO sometimes means this as well (but see below).
If both exist it usually reflects the 2 faces of an I.T. team. One is to maintain the exisiting technology (CIO) and one is to look at the business process and hence develop new technology(CTO)
Only in very big companies is IT so big you need 2 people reporting to the CEO; more common is a CIO and then 2 VPs or Directors, one for each side.
Confusingly, CTO can also refer to a completely different role, which is the problem AC has in his research.
In a technology company, someone has to have a long-term vision of where the technology is going. If this is considered a full-time post for someone it is sometimes called CTO
Example: Bill Gates has stopped being CEO and become a CTO role. Although they call him an "architect" which is another popular title for this.
This type of CTO thinks about new directions for the technology to take. He needs to work very closely with R&D,MSS,and probably with customers. She needs to have a good understanding of the CEO's vision of the direction the company should go in.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
In a nutshell, the CIO is in charge of MIS.
The CTO is in charge of R&D.
If you do not produce a harware product, software product, or software service you generally don't have a CTO.
CIO, CTO, CFO, CEO, COO, CPO, etc.
Here's my rule: Never trust a company with more than four C*O positions. C*Os are managers of managers, and more than four of 'em means too many middle-managers running around.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
In non-tech Fortune 500 company, they may have a CIO who handles information management within the company as well as the technical services. Some that have very complex technical infrastructures may have both. Under this scenario, the CTO would report to the CIO. Absent a CTO, you would normally have a Director of Technology.
In a small software company, chances are you have a CTO and no CIO. The CTO in this environment is more in charge of setting the strategic technical direction of the company and will come from a software architecture background. In a larger software company, the CTO may have a CIO who reports to them or a Director of Information Services. This CIO is just managing the company's internal systems and data, which are generally much smaller than a large non-tech company.
IMHO (of course)
I think the distinction between these two officers is clearest in software development companies:
CIO - head systems administrator
CTO - head software architect
Basically, the CIO is a "required" officer these days as most systems run computers internally that they have to maintain/upgrade/etc (email, web servers, databases, phones, etc). The CTO is usually a position reserved for tech companies who need an officer to frame the long-term technical vision of the product and be well-versed in architectural issues (networking, software development, or anything else).
w o r l d w i d e w e b e r
The CTO title is a newcomer that's been mostly fueled by the increased significance of the internet, and is most commonly seen in dot-coms. It reflects the immaturity of the internet technology and the unfortunate fact that there are now Top Computer Guys who spend more time trying to piece together gadgets than they spend meeting business needs. The high mortality of dot-coms reflects the aimlessness embodied in the new title of CTO.
I am a CTO, not an animal.
I have served as both CIO and CTO (and CEO) and may have some perspective on this issue (of course, all of us management types are clueless, but I will try;-)). Before I begin, I have not seen a formal distinction or guidelines for distinguishing between the two positions.
.... Several Internet-related sites and projects were started by techies -- think Netscape, Yahoo, etc.; think Marc Andressen types. These were techie types who developed technology that created businesses. This is a critical statement -- technology development that created businesses. When the business emerged, the techie types were not prepared to carry through with a business model. This is not denigrating the founders of the technologies. The businesses took off (Netscape, Yahoo, etc.) and formal business types were hired to run the business. This left the business in a quandry -- the founder (the techie) is effectively demoted. In addition, the founder is too dangerous to "have-on-the-outside" -- he or she could develop another technology and create a new company rather than benefit ours. Rather than demote the techie founder or let him or her be competition, a new position called CTO was created. This allowed the techie founder to retain officer level power in the company without actually needing to run the business. The CTO position is starting to change, but typically this is filled by the head techie in a company (particularly if he or she is not a traditional business type). The CTO lends vision and technology guidance.
CIO:
The CIO position has existed for several years and typically refers to IT-related and company technology infrastruture issues. Networks (including connectivity (T-1s etc.)), computer workstations, servers, software, telephone systems, building security, disaster recovery, and IT personnel typically fall under the jurisdiction of the CIO. In a nutshell, if it is modern/information age technology, and you can touch it, it is a CIO responsibility. Until recently, the CIO typically reported to the CFO (Chief Financial Officer -- the man with the money) or the COO (Chief Operating Officer -- Mr. HR) and not to the CEO. Since technology is now a strategic vector in a company, the CIO is starting to report to the CEO directly. It is a big deal among company executives to report directly to the CEO -- don't ask me why; pecking order I guess.
CTO:
I am convinced that the CTO position is fallout from the Internet explosion. A bit of history
A MBA with a penchant for technology and infrastruture (hopefully) would typically become a CIO. A Masters of Science in Computer Science or a true hacker with good development skills and vision would become a CTO.
I don't think of myself as a useless management appendage. Too bad yours might be...
Eric Livingston
Chief Technology Officer
Commerce One Global Services
www.commerceone.com
Please Rate my comment (and help support Fre
About $50,000/year.
For companies which sell software (and possibly software services) then CTO and CIO become peer roles. The CTO drives the technology direction of the company and the CIO performs a similar role to the above. In this case the CTO is very much marketing facing role.
Don't see any situation in which it would make sense for a CIO to report to the CTO.
Preface: I've been selling technology to corporations for years
Heres how it works:
CIO: Reponsible for Information Systems operateions. Rolls up to Chief Financial Office or Controller in well run companies. Rolls up to CEO in other cases with wildly different results.
CTO: Provides technology vision for company and generally is more of an advisor to the CEO in most cases. In other cases the CTO is the "head engineer" in charge of anything that is to technical for the other executives to manage.
The most powerful executive where IT is concerned is usually the Cheif Financial Office as the CFO's accounting system and databases are usually the prime raison d'etre for Information Technology.
-- $G
CTOs are wortheless management appendages. This is like most management however. As far as i can tell they do nothing but meet with other CTOs and management types all the while loosing connection with technology and anyone doing real work. When picking a CTO they must: 1. Have no clue how to dress themselves. 2. Carry many electronic devices that go off in meetings. They of course take the call because they are so very important. 3. Have opinions based on articles they read on a plane. 4. Have lots of stock so they can quit early to spend time with their family, which translates to their pets.com hand puppet.
They have a CTO that hasn't got a clue about technology and everybody that is not a techie has a either director or manager in their job title. Managers are the lowest title, project managers are called project directors who report to the director of projects who in turn reports to the senior executive of projects. Despite all of the nice titles no one has any decision making skills or for the most part any budget.
We even have a girl who's last job was working in a bar, she just looks after the operations roster and has the title of liason manager!
It is without any doubt the worst company I've ever worked for but fortunatly, they pay well even though I do nothing except get training.
To be honest and to answer your question, I've learnt a lot here about management structure, it doesn't matter what title someone has as long as they have the ability to perform.
The person asking Slashdot about this is a "general manager"? Shouldn't this mean this person has an MBA degree? Shouldn't this also mean this person should already KNOW about the structure of the modern day corporation?
Oh wait, right. He's a PHB.
For one thing, this person asks "to whom do they report?" ALL officers report to the Chief Executive Officer (that's why he's a CHIEF EXECUTIVE). The CEO usually reports to the BOARD OF DIRECTORS, if there is one.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
90% of you'all are failing to remember that 90% of companies with a CTO are NOT IT-focused. One such type of company I can think of are engineering companies? And I'm sure there are other examples, like an accounting software firm (where the CTO would be familiar with tax codes, but the CIO would not need to be).
E.g., at my company, a fabless semiconductor (i.e. "computer chip") design firm, our CTO was the originator and developer of our patented asynchronous logic technology. This has 0% to do with IT (although end-user IT products will eventually benefit from it, but not directly inside our company). Although we are a small company without a CIO at this point, we will add one / promote one (hopefully me ;-) when we grow past 200 employees or so with more than our current two offices.
Keeping with the traditional engineering example, understand that traditional engineering CTOs are usually formally educated (again, traditional engineering). The concepts and details of their technology requires this eduction, a foundation on differential equations, understanding of magnetic fields, signals, DSP, etc... to come up with new concepts and designs. Other engineering disciplines have theirs, as well as other, non-engineering fields.
I'm sure it differs at different firms or different types of firms. Still, I would see CTO and CIO as at the same level on the org chart. I don't see how either has anything to do with the other -- unless your firm is strictly an IT-focused firm (non-traditional software engineering / products).
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
Dissenter
Dissenter
"There is no knowledge that is not power."
A CIO is concerned with the communication and data processes within an company and the relationship the company when communicating to the outside world.
A CTO is concerned with the various technologies used by a company to do business, improve business practices, and cope with the changing world outside the company.
Many seem to think that the only technology a company relys on is Information Technology. This is wrong. Information technology is a vital key to success in business, but it is not the only technology to be concerned with when running a company.
Imagine your run a large television network. There are vast amounts of data that flow to keep the network on the air. The IT challenges are formidable. Outside of IT there are many other concerns with the technologies needed to roduce the shows, transmit them over satellites, and get them to people's home. Not to mention working with consumer products to develop other outlets for the audio and video media that the network produces.
Imagine you are running a theme park. Again, IT technology is vital, but so is the ability to build rides, develop new technologies for guests, and react to the competing theme parks.
As you can see, the roles of CIO and CTO are seperate and distinct. I'll conceed in a pure play IT company, there isn't a lot of ground for the CTO to cover, but most companies aren't pure play IT companies.
-----
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
I'm seeing essentially two sets of competing definitions, and they reflect the way the titles are used in the (wildly) different lands of the Fortune 500 vs. technology startups.
In the technology startup, you usually have a CTO before you have a CIO. CTOs are very frequently technical founders who either decided (or had it decided for them) to not be CEO or some other traditional management role. Also, acquisitions are great spawners of CTOs. When it's not merely a parking place, the CTO at a technology startup might (a) have the customer-focused technology strategy role that a number of people have explained, (b) may in fact be sitting at the top of the tree of all developers, or (c) may be something like an uber-Chief Architect, possibly with a little team of architects, in parallel to the larger development team.
When CIOs are introduced at startups, it's generally part of the tectonic shift away from being a startup. This is generally (as many people have explained) a PHB who has an inwardly-focused technology role. Whether or not this person sits at the top of a techology _product_ groups (including, possibly, the CTO) depends on the organization, although it has always struck me as a Bad Idea and is not very common in technology companies. Conflict between CTOs and CIOs in fast-growing tech companies are not unusual (e.g. LinuxCare) and stem from the fact that any good technology company will tend to have a bunch of very smart tech folks long before they start building out serious internal IT, and these folks, while tempermentally unsuited to operational roles, will make their annoyingly correct opinions known to the IT folks to the point where open warfare can break out.
If a company is not, fundamentally, a technology company, things are quite different. As one poster pointed out, the tension is usually between pockets of IT expertise in outlying groups vs. Central Services. CIOs at large, non-technical companies generally do (try) to sit on pretty much everything technical, and for various reasons (economies of scale, power trips, whatever) try to get things done in a consistent way as dictated by their organization. In an organization like this, a CTO generally would report to the CIO, and would have a role something like an uber-Chief Architect. This would generally _not_ be an outward-facing role, although this person might participate in IT-related standards bodies, write papers, etc. out of personal interest.
I would be surprised if there is any agreenment between one company and the next on what the roles are. More then likely they were just buz words that companies used when they wanted to put someone in charge of those new fangled computer thingy's.
guvf vf zl fvt
We also have a CIO, who's in charge of our internal IT. It is a non-customer facing role, and is in charge of keeping us operating with the right automation (email servers, file servers, etc).
So, as another poster put it, CTO=customer facing/solution oriented stuff, while CIO=Internal automation/infrastructure stuff.
Eric Livingston
Chief Technology Officer
Commerce One Global Services
www.commerceone.com
Please Rate my comment (and help support Fre
Who cares - they both sound like useless BizHead bum lickers... I say you remove everyone above the level of 'Team Leader'. The rest of those yutz's are just parasites anyway.
IMHO, A CTO is responsible for guiding the company w.r.t the technical products that it develops (thinking here of people like Marcus Ranum of NFR and Bruce Schneier of Counterpane). They may also be a figurehead for the user community.
A CIO, on the other hand, is responsible for all IT systems used internally and how they interact with the business. Head of Internal Systems if you like. Also responsible for things like setting Information Security policy, Acceptable Use Policy, the phone system, and, in the UK, probably the person the spooks would get in touch with if they wanted a private key under the terms of the RIP bill.
Quite different roles, y'see. CTO is primarily customer-facing, CIO is primarily internally-facing. If you don't want both, just have a Technical Director who's "in charge of anything technical". :)
CIO - Understands the _business_ information needs of the company, customers, suppliers, management (at all levels), and stockholders. These are the _stakeholders_ of the corporation's operations - and might be extended to also include government (local, state, national) and even the public. Directs the (re-) architecting of company information domains and business processes (sales, operations, supply chain, financial, human resources, etc...). Deals with information needs and business processes, but not information technology architectures, per se. Works with the CEO/President on business models and vision issues, and collaborates with business VPs to learn their needs and develop new concepts. Works with the CTO to design appropriate systems. The CIO is a _business_ person with IT experience.
CTO - Understands current technology alternatives and capabilities, including strengths/weaknesses and tradeoffs of various choices in the hierarchy of applications, databases, transactional systems, operating systems, networking, platforms... other hardware. Takes direction on business needs from the CIO (or CEO/President, if there isn't a CIO), and plans for technology evolution of the company systems. The CTO is a _technology_ person having some familiarity with the company business model.
It's a division of responsibilities proceeding from CIO overloads in the early '90s. (CIOs came first, recently supplemented by CTO positions.)
I've worked for lots of Fortune 500 companies, so I think I have a good handle on what a CIO does in traditional organizations that understand what the role of a CIO is.
A CIO, who ideally reports to the CEO, is responsible for all information technology that runs the company, all of the technology infrastructure. That means networks, servers, databases, third-party applications, programming staff, project managers, specialized consultants, etc.
A CIO spends much of her time managing a portfolio of projects, each one dedicated to a particular goal, whether it's upgrading the corporate desktops, installing new network equipment, or developing (in conjunction with consultants) a sexy new e-commerce application.
Typically, a CIO has 2 key direct reports: a Vice President of Operations, and a Vice President of Applications. The former maintains the network, the hardware, the data center, and other "static" portions of the CIO's domains, often reporting key metrics such as uptime, throughput, cycles used, etc. The latter oversees the design, development, deployment, and support of all applications throughout the enterprise. The latter emphasizes metrics for estimated time to completion, FTEs, etc.
For the last 10 to 15 years, CIOs have spent a lot of time fighting their way into the executive boardroom and getting the ear of the CEO. They have had to justify why they should report to a CEO rather than the CFO, as happens in some places, and why they can help the business strategically rather than provide mere operational support. Not an easy task, but CIOs appear to be getting their message out. And the longevity of the average CIO appears to be lengthening!
ask your chief acronym officer.