A vCIO — virtual CIO — is a fractional chief information officer: senior IT leadership on a retainer instead of a full-time hire. You get a CIO's strategy, roadmap, and vendor judgment, scaled to what an SMB actually needs.

vCIO vs. fractional CIO — what's the difference?

In practice, the same engagement. "vCIO" is the term the managed-services and SMB world uses; "fractional CIO" shows up more in startup and finance circles. We use them interchangeably.

What does a virtual CIO cost?

Stratum's vCIO services run $3,500–$7,500 per month — a retainer, not a custom quote — with a three-month minimum and month-to-month after that. Virtual CIO pricing and rates scale with cadence and scope: how often you meet, and how much sits between the quarterly reviews. You're paying for a senior practitioner doing the work directly, not a handoff to a junior analyst; a discovery call sizes where in the range you land.

What does a virtual CIO do?

A virtual CIO owns the strategic side of IT without taking on the operational side. In practice that's four jobs: maintaining a multi-year technology roadmap, acting as the senior second opinion on high-stakes decisions, providing vendor-neutral oversight of your MSP and software contracts, and translating the state of your technology for boards, auditors, and leadership. It does not include tier-1/2 support or after-hours incident response — that stays with your MSP.

What's the difference between a vCIO and a fractional IT director?

Mostly altitude. A fractional IT director leans operational — managing the team, the tickets, the day-to-day delivery — while a vCIO (or virtual CIO) sits at the strategy-and-roadmap level: where technology is headed, what earns budget, and how it aligns with business goals. Stratum's retainer is the vCIO shape. If you need someone running daily operations, that's a different engagement, and we'll say so on the discovery call rather than stretch the retainer to cover it.

Is "CIO as a service" the same as virtual CIO consulting?

Yes — they're labels for the same thing: senior IT leadership delivered on a retainer instead of a salary. "CIO as a service," "virtual CIO consulting," and "vCIO services" all describe an experienced practitioner giving you strategy, roadmap, and vendor judgment at the cadence your organization actually needs, with the cost scaled to match.

Strategic Partnership

vCIO services on a quarterly retainer.

vCIO services — senior IT leadership for organizations between owner-led IT and a full-time CIO.

Monthly cadence

one-hour check-in plus on-call advice
Quarterly business review

four hours, deliverable-rich
$3,500–$7,500 / month

by organization size and scope

Why this matters.

A vCIO — virtual CIO — is senior IT leadership engaged on a fractional retainer instead of a full-time hire.

There is a wide band between "the owner runs IT on the side" and "we need a full-time CIO" — and most growing organizations sit in it longer than they expect. The questions get harder (which SaaS sprawl actually matters, when do we modernize identity, what does the cloud bill look like in eighteen months) but the answer "hire a CIO" stays out of reach for years. The retainer fills that gap on purpose. You get the senior-IT thinking, the roadmap maintenance, and the second opinion on big calls — without the headcount.

The work is strategic guidance, not a help desk. A virtual chief information officer keeps technology planning tied to where the business is actually going — the hire you're about to make, the location you're about to open, the system you're about to outgrow — so the roadmap reflects your business objectives instead of a generic best-practices checklist. That means the technology decisions align with business goals rather than running on a separate track: which strategic initiatives earn budget this year, where a digital transformation push is worth the disruption and where it isn't, and how the IT spend turns into a competitive advantage rather than a line item the board keeps asking about. It's the same judgment a full-time CIO brings to those calls, sized and priced for an organization that doesn't yet need one at full time.

What we do.

A monthly one-hour check-in on whatever's on your plate that month — a vendor conversation, an upcoming hire, an architecture decision, a budget question. A quarterly business review (four hours, deliverable-rich) that updates the living roadmap, walks the leadership team through the next ninety days, and surfaces the risks worth tracking. On-call advice between cadences (one-business-day response, fair-use). When a project is large enough to warrant separate scope, we either run it as a Targeted Project at a discounted retainer-client day rate, or hand off cleanly to your existing MSP or implementation partner. The work spans technology strategy and strategic planning, the multi-year roadmap, vendor relationships, budget, and the business-continuity and disaster-recovery questions that surface in a quarterly review — the same ground a traditional, full-time CIO covers, without the full-time cost.

Engagements run on a three-month minimum. After that, cancel any time on thirty days' notice — we'd rather you stay because the work is landing than because you're locked in.

What a virtual CIO actually does.

Day to day, a virtual CIO does the senior-IT thinking an organization needs occasionally but can't justify hiring for full time. That breaks into a few recurring jobs. The first is technology strategy and planning — maintaining a multi-year view of where the environment is headed, what gets modernized when, and which strategic initiatives are worth the budget this cycle. The second is decision support — being the experienced second opinion on the calls that are expensive to get wrong: an architecture choice, a platform migration, a security investment, a contract you're about to sign for three years.

The third is vendor and MSP oversight. Most growing organizations already have a managed-services provider running daily operations; what they lack is someone senior the MSP doesn't report to — a vendor-neutral voice in the contract review, the RFP, and the quarterly scorecard. Virtual CIO consulting fills that seat. The fourth is translation: turning the state of the technology into language a board, an auditor, an insurer, or a parent company can act on, and turning the leadership team's business objectives back into a technology plan that aligns with where the company is going.

What it deliberately isn't: hands-on ticket work, a 24/7 pager rotation, or a project manager with no strategic input. CIO as a service is leadership and judgment on a retainer — the roadmap, the second opinion, the vendor scrutiny, the QBR — not another body in the support queue. If a piece of work is big enough to need its own plan and timeline, it gets scoped as a separate project so the retainer hours stay on strategy. That boundary is what keeps the engagement worth a senior practitioner's time and keeps your spend pointed at the decisions that move the business.

What you walk away with.

A living roadmap document you can hand to a board, an auditor, or your successor. A quarterly written record of where the technology stands and where it's headed. A senior practitioner who already knows your environment when the next thing breaks or the next decision lands. The roadmap is yours; if you decide to bring on a full-time IT leader later, it travels with you.

What's in scope.

Monthly one-hour check-in on whatever's active. Quarterly business review (four hours, deliverable-rich) with a written summary inside five business days. Living roadmap document, updated quarterly. Vendor management consultation — sitting in on contract reviews, RFP shaping, MSP scorecard conversations. On-call advice between cadences (one-business-day response, fair-use). A discounted day rate for project work outside the retainer.

What's out of scope.

Hands-on tier-1 / tier-2 IT support — that's MSP territory and we work alongside, not against, your existing MSP. Incident response with a 24/7 SLA — escalation and post-incident debrief, yes; pager rotation, no. Implementation work delivered under the retainer hourly meter (we scope project work as a separate Targeted Project so retainer hours stay strategic). Pure project management without strategic input — there are firms that do that better and cheaper.

This is the right engagement when…

You've outgrown owner-led IT, but a full-time CIO is twelve to twenty-four months away (or further).
You have an MSP for the daily operations work, and you need somebody senior the MSP doesn't report to — vendor-neutral, no incentive to upsell.
A board, an auditor, an insurer, or a parent organization is starting to ask for an IT roadmap, and "we'll get to it" isn't going to hold for another quarter.
You're heading into a strategic event — acquisition, divestiture, system replacement, growth round — and you want a senior practitioner in the room before the spend ramps.
You've been running with a fractional CIO or fractional IT director who is too expensive, too thinly spread, or too far from operator-level detail for the questions you're actually asking.

What you receive across the engagement.

Quarterly Business Review (QBR) report Four-hour working session plus a written summary inside five business days. Covers state of the environment, progress against the roadmap, risks worth tracking, and the next quarter's priorities.
Living IT roadmap A maintained document (not a one-time deck). Updated each QBR. Mapped to organizational priorities, with effort × impact for each item and a candid view of what's blocked, deferred, or no longer worth doing.
Monthly check-in notes Short written record of what was discussed, what was decided, and what's open. Fits in an email; archivable for the file.
Vendor and MSP consultation, on demand Sitting in on quarterly MSP reviews, contract renewals, RFP shaping, or post-incident debriefs. Counts toward the retainer; no separate billing.
On-call advice between cadences Phone, email, or a quick video call. One-business-day response. Fair-use scoping; if your usage pattern looks more like project work than advisory, we scope a Targeted Project together.

Here's the shape of one cadence — the kind of work this retainer covers across a quarter, not a redacted excerpt from delivered work.

How we're different.

Vendor-neutral by design. No reseller margins, no MSP upsell agenda, no kickbacks from the vendors we recommend or critique.
Principal-led delivery. Corey is the practitioner. No handoff to a delivery analyst or a junior consultant. The person you spec the engagement with is the person who shows up to the QBR.
Productized, not hourly. Fixed monthly fee, defined cadence, written deliverables. You know what you're paying for and what's coming back.

Common questions.

What is a vCIO?: A vCIO — virtual CIO — is a fractional chief information officer: senior IT leadership on a retainer instead of a full-time hire. You get a CIO's strategy, roadmap, and vendor judgment, scaled to what an SMB actually needs.
vCIO vs. fractional CIO — what's the difference?: In practice, the same engagement. "vCIO" is the term the managed-services and SMB world uses; "fractional CIO" shows up more in startup and finance circles. We use them interchangeably.
What does a virtual CIO cost?: Stratum's vCIO services run $3,500–$7,500 per month — a retainer, not a custom quote — with a three-month minimum and month-to-month after that. Virtual CIO pricing and rates scale with cadence and scope: how often you meet, and how much sits between the quarterly reviews. You're paying for a senior practitioner doing the work directly, not a handoff to a junior analyst; a discovery call sizes where in the range you land.
What does a virtual CIO do?: A virtual CIO owns the strategic side of IT without taking on the operational side. In practice that's four jobs: maintaining a multi-year technology roadmap, acting as the senior second opinion on high-stakes decisions, providing vendor-neutral oversight of your MSP and software contracts, and translating the state of your technology for boards, auditors, and leadership. It does not include tier-1/2 support or after-hours incident response — that stays with your MSP.
What's the difference between a vCIO and a fractional IT director?: Mostly altitude. A fractional IT director leans operational — managing the team, the tickets, the day-to-day delivery — while a vCIO (or virtual CIO) sits at the strategy-and-roadmap level: where technology is headed, what earns budget, and how it aligns with business goals. Stratum's retainer is the vCIO shape. If you need someone running daily operations, that's a different engagement, and we'll say so on the discovery call rather than stretch the retainer to cover it.
Is "CIO as a service" the same as virtual CIO consulting?: Yes — they're labels for the same thing: senior IT leadership delivered on a retainer instead of a salary. "CIO as a service," "virtual CIO consulting," and "vCIO services" all describe an experienced practitioner giving you strategy, roadmap, and vendor judgment at the cadence your organization actually needs, with the cost scaled to match.

Want to talk through whether a vCIO retainer fits your organization?

Schedule a free discovery call

Indiana · U.S. remote