FEATURE ARTICLE: The Top 10 Things You Need From a CTO

It's a challenge building an ebusiness. The Web site is just one part: Building a Web-based enterprise is a mix of both business and technology, and the mix is different for each phase of a new Web-based initiative. These phases are: start up, growth, differentiation, and ebusiness-line expansion. The art of mixing business and technology is the stuff for a Chief Technology Officer(CTO). Every Web-based business needs someone to perform this task. It is the difference between being an also ran - or worse, a flameout - and becoming the leader.

This article will help you determine when and what to expect from a CTO.

1. Safe at Any Speed

Ebusinesses must race to commercial viability without spending time to analyze every aspect of the business and design every facet of the architecture. A CTO must accelerate business growth and does so by employing iterative development strategies. These strategies enable the business to get started and avoid the known problems. Iterative development strategies also allow the flexibility to take advantage of unforeseen business opportunities without a major architectural overhaul.

2.Where in the World?

Development personnel are in short supply in the U.S. A CTO can dramatically reduce this problem by implementing a mature development process. A well documented design - including functional specs, detailed process flows and a storyboard with named files and fields - allows your development staff to share the burden with other development teams (local, national, international) so you can increase the pool of resources available to your business.

3. Remember Thy Customer

While most information systems are inward looking, communicating inside the company with trickles leaking out through legacy EDI connections, ebusinesses are outward looking. Serving real customers in real time is no easy feat especially when customers and entire markets can change almost instantly. A CTO must also be outward looking and as comfortable talking to senior management, customers, marketing and sales personnel and investors as he or she is talking with engineers. Talking to these folks assures that your technical solutions will serve your customers the way they want to be served.

4. Keep Those Feet Moving

Just when we were getting comfortable with n-tier architecture, along comes wireless devices with tiny screens, limited bandwidth and unusual situations and circumstances for users of these devices. A CTO must prepare your ebusiness for continual integration based on published APIs, widely accepted industry standards, standards-based components, flexible middleware and open systems. Avoiding proprietary technologies can be an important, if very stealth, contribution.

5. Let's Hope We Speak the Same Language

Ebusiness requires standards. How else can information flow from one site to another and from the front end of one site to the back end of another? The alphabet soup of standards, TCP/IP, the networking standard, HTTP, the Web transport standard, XML, WML, WAP, LDAP and so on all require a CTO to referee these technologies in the context of business objectives. The standards issue between Java 2 Enterprise Edition and Microsoft's Component Object Model Architecture should be y reconciled along business, not technology, lines.

6. The “T” in CTO.

Much of the technology underlying ebusiness is based on architecture that must be:

a) scalable b) available c) secure d) manageable.

A CTO must balance technology needs and business needs in terms of the infrastructure components.

7. Stand and Deliver

An ebusiness Web site is not static. The applications are forever active, changing the information that is presented every day, hour and minute. Moreover, personalization changes the views of information for each individual. A CTO must design the management of this content so it both meets the needs of customers (who are the source of all revenues) and allows non-technical personnel to administer.

8. Did You Get an “A”?

A Website can pass a test with one set of content at one size load and then perform poorly when a different set of content is presented. Testing is continuous. It is also differentiated into functional, load, integration and usability. Of these, the latter two are most difficult. A CTO can handle the first two with simple test suites. The latter two require strategic planning because the permutations are limitless and cannot all be tested. Integration testing is a rising challenge due to increased use of components such as CRM, personalization, collaboration, fulfillment and business intelligence. These components can reside on the ebusiness infrastructure or delivered by outside providers.

9. Saving for a Rainy Day

Ebusiness generates massive amounts of data that must be captured, stored and be readily accessible. A CTO must address this rather mundane issue by considering the benefits to both the customer and the business of conventional server-attached storage, storage area networks or outsourced storage. In any case, scalability, high availability and security cannot be sacrificed.

10. At Your Service

The challenges of building and running an ebusiness infrastructure - 24x7 operation, unknowns, constant change, demands for availability, scalability and the lack of skilled people - suggest the need for alternative solutions. A CTO must select, negotiate and maintain a set of services that ensure the fundamental success factor for his or her ebusiness. These range from organizing logistics for supporting functions such as CRM to hosting content on servers around the country or the world, which puts the content closer to the user, or host specialized content such as streaming media.

Puttng These All Together

A full E-business infrastructure is too complex to tackle all at once, especially given the need to get to market fast. A CTO must structure all of the Top 10 functions discussed here into phases: Fast start; Growth; Differentiation; and ebusiness offensive. Through each phase, integration is a constant. Fast start means getting the ebusiness up and running rapidly. A CTO must focus on the set of core functions and amount of content that achieves just a little more than simple commercial viability. This is the art of combining the technology and business that a CTO must practice and master. Later, this art becomes your company's competitive advantage and can lead to the ultimate success or failure of your ebusiness.

In the growth phase, a company must take advantage and preserve scalability, both vertical and horizontal. The growth phase is the time to add features and functionality, expand content, and to see traffic increases that will continue through subsequent phases. After the company has absorbed the early growth, it's time to focus on differentiating the E-business. This involves personalization, CRM, and the integration of partners who will bring enhanced services.

Now the company is ready to go on the E-business offensive, to shift from reactive or defensive mode, which is how most organizations begin their E-business efforts, to an offensive strategy in which they pursue new opportunities. This will require yet more integration of new and different partners, as well as the possible adoption of new technologies, such as wireless or streaming media. This phase will test the scalability and flexibility of the E-business infrastructure, but this is where the big return takes place. By addressing the Top 10 things identified here, your CTO will contribute tremendous value to your Web-based business.

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Last Modified October 11, 2005