What is a fractional CIO and why should you get one?
IT is unlike any other function in modern business. Whereas other disciplines do not change much over time (e.g.: accounting), IT changes all the time. The IT tools and methods that prevailed yesterday can bring your business down today (e.g.: antiquated business processes, incapacitating incidents, ransomware, etc.).
There is little that a gaggle of contractors and overworked or under-qualified staff can do about this.
Midsize businesses - 10 to 200 IT users - need a real CIO or IT manager. They need someone who knows them and their business, and, most importantly, who knows what's "out there", They need someone who takes responsibility for what needs to be done and does it.
IT is the operational nervous system of your organization. If it is dysfunctional, the business is dysfunctional. If it is effective, the business gains in efficiency, reach, and competitiveness.
Risks and challenges do not reduce with the size of a business. Rather, they increase when share-of-mind and means decrease. Bugs, viruses, hackers, and malfunctions hit big and small businesses indiscriminately. When small and midsize businesses hire a Managed Service Provider (MSP) to handle their IT needs, they inevitably expose their infrastructure to ransomware attacks. MSP's use Remote Management and Monitoring systems (RMM) to automate the maintenance of their clients' PC's and servers (Kaseya®, ConnectWise®, Solarwinds®, Datto®, etc.). These subscription-based and web-based multi-tenant systems are prized ransomware attack vectors because of their reach and inherent vulnerability to bugs and social engineering schemes. Most run on public cloud servers. Some systems have no other protection than that offered by the public cloud vendor they are running on (iow. they have none).
Sharing time and expertise across a handful of clients, the fractional CIO makes the services of a CIO affordable to midsize businesses.
Fractional CIO's provide a breadth and scope of experience and expertise that cannot be acquired by an employee working for a single employer or by a consultant or MSP staffer.
Since fractional CIO are not in the business of reselling labor, hardware or software (as against MSP’s), their clients can benefit from technologies that surpass the run-of-the-mill commercial infrastructure software and hardware.
Fractional CEO's are driven to optimize and secure because they do not have time to extinguish the same fire twice. Having multiple clients provides them with the opportunity to engage in research and to proactively address what causes issues rather than merely react to them.
I provide midsize businesses with the power and security of enterprise IT. I do this with the same rock-solid open-source software and cloud technologies that Google, Amazon and IBM deploy for themselves and their clients.