CIOs vs. CTOs

Keith Lowe pointed me to an article on Jonathan Schwartz's blog (which I do read myself, but not very often) that has the title The Internet as a Customer.  For me, the most interesting part was the comparison of CTOs and CIOs.  I would have expected more similarity, but what do I know.  A few excerpts:

• No CIO wore a baseball cap. The same was not true of the CTO sessions
• The cost of people and change dominated the CIO room - not capital assets or power
• The cost of storage and bandwidth dominated the room filled with web companies
• Not a single company in the CTO room paid for software. Many knew Sun exclusively from our work in the open source or academic arena - validating free communities as a vehicle to meet new opportunities, before they join the Fortune 100
• In contrast, not a single company in the CIO room allowed free software without a commercial support contract. Not one. Validating the notion that for more mature/diverse companies, the cost of downtime dwarfs the cost of a support contract.
• The CTO's in the web companies wanted innovation at an accelerating pace
• The CIO's (broadly) wanted innovation to slow down long enough for them to manage and exploit it
• Virtualization and open source storage were big topics in both rooms - [...]
• The CTO's said we were too hard to do business with, but they appreciated the ease with which our software could be freely downloaded
• The CIO's praised us for being so easy to do business with, and one groused about the ease with which his developers can bring our software into his network

Now, here's my Church IT question: is your role more of a CIO, or a CTO?  (or something completely different?)  I find myself identifying with both groups, even when they had opposite answers!  (well, except for the baseball cap -- I don't think I've ever worn one to work)

Comments

[Clif Guy]

I've been a CTO in the past but now I'm a CIO. Frankly, I enjoy the CTO role more because it fits my entrepreneurial, innovative, risk-taking nature. At Resurrection, though, I seek stability because our user community thrives on it. My job now is mostly to "make sure the trains run on time."

[Kevin R Poole]

What an awesome comparison. As a business mind, it is intriguing to see the different outlooks on costs and which costs are motivating factors. Cool Post.