The V3 Hot Seat: IFS chief technology officer Dan Matthews

Matthews on his admiration for Anders Hejlsberg and his weak spot for AI technologies

As chief technology officer (CTO) at enterprise resource planning software firm IFS, Dan Matthews' responsibilities encompass researching, formulating, and communicating the strategic direction for IFS Applications.

Matthews leads the Research & Strategy unit for IFS and manages the firm's partnerships with Microsoft, Oracle and other players.

Since joining IFS in 1996, Matthews has held a number of positions within the company including software engineer and project manager.

Matthews follows the likes of Microsoft chief privacy officer Brendon Lynch and Box chief executive Aaron Levie in the Hot Seat as part of V3's weekly look into what makes those in the IT industry tick.

V3: What would be your dream job (apart from your current role, of course)?

Dan Matthews: I wouldn't mind heading up a major green field software initiative. In software so much of what we do is improvement and evolution to existing products, but there is something to be said about starting from a blank piece of paper (or empty code window).

Which person do you most admire in the IT industry?

For me it is still Anders Hejlsberg, the guy behind Turbo Pascal, Delphi and C#. I started my career in IT as a programmer in the days of Turbo Pascal and if you think about the millions and millions of developers that use C# and the fact that Anders is still active in taking C# forward it is quite a feat.

Which technology has had the biggest impact on your working life?

It's a toss-up between mobile email and integrated communications. Being able to chat/call/share the screen easily regardless of whether I am in the office, at home, or in a hotel lobby has made a world of a difference in distributed organisations like ours.

What's been the highlight of your career so far?

When we announced and first showed our new user interface for IFS Applications, "IFS Enterprise Explorer", at our World Conference in 2007.

Our product had, to be honest, started to look a bit dated and with the new user experience we leap frogged ahead of competitors and blew customers and employees away. It is not often you surpass expectations in IT, but this was one of those times.

The V3 Hot Seat: IFS chief technology officer Dan Matthews

Matthews on his admiration for Anders Hejlsberg and his weak spot for AI technologies

What was your first job?

Actually I was self-employed throughout university and for a time after. The first "job" I did for a customer was developing a piece of software used by opticians to analyse and journal retina scans of people's eyes. It was great fun since it involved using one of the early video capture solutions: a full size ISA-card called the "Screen Machine II", if I remember correctly.

What's your favourite thing about working in the IT industry?

It's a very creative industry. Although we don't create physical objects, we build things all the time. And with my current job I get to combine the creativity with strategising and communicating - the perfect combination for me.

What will be the next big innovation of the coming years?

I've always had a weak spot for Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies and I think we will finally see major breakthroughs soon, in two ways.

One, AI as a means to control all the various robots we are starting to use (not the ones on legs, more like the automatic lawn movers or vacuum cleaners). Two, artificial intelligences as "assistants" to help us manage a chunk of our presence on the internet so that we can spend our time on the parts of it that really mean something to us.

What keeps you awake at night?

Very little actually. The only times I am really kept awake for work reasons is when I am "onto something", typically just as the pieces to a new strategy, a particular presentation, or the solution to a difficult problem, start to come together.

Windows or Mac OS?

Windows. Started with a PC, stayed with a PC.

On-premise or cloud?

Cloud. Mainly because of the self-service aspects and not needing to wait for someone else to do their part before you can get going.

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