Assessments · Fractional CTO

Senior Technology Leadership, Without a Full-Time CTO

Start with a fixed-fee assessment of where your systems, security and AI use really stand, or bring me in on a monthly retainer to lead your technology. Either way, you work directly with me.

Fixed-Fee Assessments Monthly CTO Retainers Senior Expert Only NDA on Request

Book a Free 30-Minute Scoping Call See the CTO Retainer

Fixed-Fee Assessments

One Problem, or the Whole Picture

Both are fixed fee, quoted after a free 30-minute scoping call. Half at the start, half on delivery of the final report.

Option 1

Focused Assessment

2 to 3 weeks · fixed fee

One problem area you already know is hurting. For example:

Backup, recovery and disaster readiness
Cloud or hosting cost that keeps rising
Security posture before a customer audit
AI adoption: where it is safe, where it is risky

Option 2

Full Assessment

4 to 5 weeks · fixed fee

The whole environment, examined as one system:

Infrastructure, architecture and hosting
Backup, recovery and resilience
Security controls and vendor exposure
AI systems in use, and how they are governed

How It Works

Read First, Then Interview, Then Verify

Documents first

Configurations, backup records, disaster recovery test results, contracts and security reports. I read before I interview, so your team's time goes to questions that matter.

Interviews and failure scenarios

Conversations with each team and key vendors, then realistic failures walked through: a site outage, ransomware, a bad backup found late, a vendor outage, the loss of a key person.

Draft reviewed with you

You see the draft findings before the final report, so anything I got wrong is corrected, not published. Every finding is labeled verified or asserted, not verified, and benchmarked against SOC 2, ISO 27001 or NIST CSF.

What You Receive

Prioritized gap list: fix now, this quarter, this year, or accept
Cost to fix and cost of not fixing, for each gap
Current and target architecture diagrams
Single points of failure and what each one stops
Recovery-time and data-loss exposure against your targets
Security gaps with specific remediations
A one-page executive summary

Focused Assessments deliver the items that apply to the chosen area.

Fee

Fixed fee, quoted after a free 30-minute scoping call. Half at start, half on delivery of the final report.

Confidentiality

I sign your NDA. The findings and documents are yours.

Independence

No vendor commissions. Any conflict is disclosed up front.

Afterwards

If you want help carrying out the plan, it can continue as a fractional CTO retainer (below), scoped separately, and only if the assessment has earned it.

Ongoing Leadership

Fractional CTO on Monthly Retainer

For smaller companies and startups that need a CTO but not a full-time one. Start after an assessment, or directly if you already know what you need.

Level 1

Advisory CTO

A senior technical voice for the founders and the board. Technology strategy, build-versus-buy and vendor decisions, a second opinion on architecture, and support with investor questions and technical due diligence.

Level 2

Operating CTO

I run your CTO office. Technology roadmap and priorities, the engineering team and contractors, hiring, vendors and cloud cost, security and compliance readiness (SOC 2, AI governance), and reporting to the CEO and board.

Level 3

Architect CTO

Technical leadership plus hands-on work. System architecture and design, prototypes and proofs of concept, code reviews and engineering standards, and building critical components alongside your team, including AI and LLM integration.

Monthly retainer

Billed monthly in advance. The level is agreed on a free scoping call and can change as your needs do.

3-month minimum

Then month to month, with 30 days' notice either way.

Baseline first

The first month includes a baseline review, so decisions start from facts rather than guesses. A one-page report every month after that.

Take It With You

Share It With Your Team

Both documents are free to download and forward.

One-Page Overview

Everything on a single page: both assessment options, how they work, what you receive, and the three fractional CTO levels.

Download PDF →

Assessment Methodology (5 slides)

How the assessment is run: the approach, the failure scenarios, how gaps are ranked, and the deliverables.

Download PDF →

Who Does the Work

Senior Judgment on Every Engagement

Prasad N. Golla, Ph.D., MBA

Founder, Aggi Technologies LLC · Fractional CTO · AI Security & Governance

25+ years in networks, distributed systems, security and infrastructure, including Senior Research Scientist at Alcatel-Lucent Corporate Research Labs and engineering work at Citi, Bank of America, Amazon Kuiper and Nokia. Ph.D. in Computer Engineering (SMU) and an MBA in Technology Management (UT Dallas); 10+ granted U.S. and European patents. Founder of ARIA, the Aggi Responsible Intelligence Assessor, a continuous AI compliance platform. Full history on LinkedIn.

Ph.D. · SMU MBA · UT Dallas 10+ Patents Corporate Research Lab Heritage