The V3 Hot Seat: IFS chief technology officer Dan Matthews

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.