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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?"
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.
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nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
I've been working for our head of software architecture, who jokingly clled himself "junior CTO", and with the departure of the founding CTO will be filling his shoes. Both of them are founders, and kept the flame alive about what the key technology in the product is, and, more importantly what it should be. Neither of them were management positions, nor were they under the VP of Engineering (or vice versa). As we grow (we are currently ~ 250 world wide, with 80 in Platform Engineering,) the CTO function looks like the replacement for the traditional research/ labs role. (Setting up a corporate lab often failed because the researchers were isolated and felt no allegiance to the company's product goals.)
The CTO is often the tag given to the inventor/ PhD in a venture. The CTO function often interacts significantly with customers -- just as the CEO might be the super-sales person in a startup, the CTO is the super-sales engineer.
Of course, if a company does not recognize the need for technology drive behind the product, or the technology in the product is "thin" (like many recent internet plays), then the CTO role is trivial.
In a 'typical' startup the founding folks, ranked by importance (i.e. fraction of shares) may go like this:
- President (may also be head of sales or marketing before those are distinguished.)
- VP Finance (or CFO - may not be necessary until the company has plans to go public.)
- VP Product Development (e.g. Engineering)
- VP Operations (also may be head of IT, Tech. support, etc.)
- CTO
John Mark Agosta
Edify Corp.
so much uncertainty, so little time..
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.