Salmen says that working for a technology provider like Orcon means his focus would be different from his peers in the enterprise space. 

"One of the key differences between what I do and what traditional enterprise CIO would do is that our customers are external customers to the business rather than internal customers," says Salmen. In his case, the main task is setting the company's strategic technical direction in its networks, its applications software development and its entire infrastructure.

Salmen points out Orcon is now one of the fastest growing telecommunications providers in New Zealand, with over 150,000 broadband, mobile and hosted business and residential customers. It was acquired by state-owned Kordia Group in 2007, and it has grown nearly four times since then.

His staff number 55 but the exact figure "goes up and down a bit" depending on the need. Orcon's technology staff is split into three teams: It is comprised of the software team which develops all internal apps and billing systems; the networks team which manages and builds all of Orcon's network assets including the voice network and international networks; and the systems and IT applications people who look after the company's datacentre infrastructure, storage networks, server environments and hosting platforms.

"The majority of our platforms are all customer facing, they are directly used by end customers," says Salmen.