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What's The Difference Between A CIO And A CTO?
Posted by
Cliff
on Sun Jan 07, 2001 06:36 AM
from the three-letter-acronyms-can-be-confusing-yes? dept.
from the three-letter-acronyms-can-be-confusing-yes? dept.
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?"
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What's The Difference Between a CIO and a CTO?
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Chello (Score:3)
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.
Okay, this is what we mean by "PHB" (Score:3)
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.
Re:Serious Answer - That's IT specific! (Score:3)
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
Re:Serious Answer (Score:3)
Dissenter
The difference between the CIO & CTO is simple (Score:3)
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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Re:CIO vs. CTO (Score:3)
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.
Fortune 500 vs. Startup (Score:3)
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.
Perhaps there is no traditional role (Score:3)
Well, I'm a CTO... (Score:3)
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
Re:Perhaps there is no traditional role (Score:3)
Exactly. There is virtually no consistency between companies on this score. Also, there has been a great deal of title inflation over the last half year or so, as companies which can no longer entice people with stock options or sheer dot-com glitz use titles to attract or hold good people. I've seen companies with a CIO, a CTO, a VP of Technology, a Chief Architect, several Senior Software Engineers -- and nothing below that. We actually joke about this where I work; I'm the Lord High Pope and Emperor of Technology, for example. :)
If things were more reasonable, I'd see the CIO role being more about MIS and infrastructure, and the CTO role being product- or service-focused. The CIO picks payroll systems and buys file servers, while the CTO does the vision thing with product roadmaps and architecture, including tech selection, partnerships, and so forth.
Re:It interferes with his pron surfing... (Score:3)
www.adbusters.org (Score:3)
Serious Answer (Score:4)
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 & CTO - How it's supposed to work. (Score:5)
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.)
Traditional role of a CIO (Score:5)
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!
chief acronym officer (Score:5)