Time is running out to nominate candidates for InfoWorld's CTO 25 Wanted: superstar CTOs. No, InfoWorld isn’t hiring; we’re honoring. Specifically, we’re preparing our fourth annual CTO 25 Awards, recognizing chief technologists who have led their companies — or the IT community — by example during the past 12 months.Don’t get too hung up on the CTO title; our judges will consider senior-most IT executives who make the big technology decisions, from chief information architect or CIO (if your company doesn’t have a CTO) to vice president of engineering or even tech kahuna. The deadline for submissions is Feb. 7, and you can find the nomination form at infoworld.com/awards.What makes a superstar CTO? Here’s a preliminary bullet list. Has he or she: Created a new tech-driven profit center for the enterprise? Driven a new technology or spearheaded a new standard within the tech community? Initiated a significant XML, Web services, or SOA (service-oriented architecture) deployment? Succeeded in a substantial integration project? Made an outsourcing or offshoring project work effectively or, conversely, implemented a successful keep-it-in-house strategy? Planned and handled major staffing changes? Recognized a potential vulnerability and shut it down? Restructured or optimized workflow or collaboration within the organization? Turned painful IT experiences into pleasurable ones? Put the technology in place to keep the compliance hounds at bay? Maximized efficiency in the supply chain? This is a partial list, of course. Several of this week’s columns, however, point to other likely CTO success stories. For example, InfoWorld’s own CTO, Chad Dickerson elaborates on the daily struggle between users — who assume their needs are unique — and the IT manager who must manage systems centrally in a predictable, consistent, and efficient manner (see CTO Connection). Chad isn’t eligible for the InfoWorld CTO 25 (I’m told the fine print includes the phrase “not open to InfoWorld employees and their families”), but his experiences from the trenches provide a template for IT management challenges in the real world — not to mention the real InfoWorld. In his column, Ephraim Schwartz looks at another CTO-style test: using IT to optimize product lifecycles and create automated workflows in response to dynamic data (see Reality Check). While from the back page, Tom Yager makes the technology case for InfiniBand, a high-speed architecture found primarily in the HPC (high-performance computing) realm (see Ahead of the Curve). Although CTOs aren’t laying InfiniBand cable today, the more farsighted ones are evaluating it for future implementations. Those tech strategists may not be cited in this year’s CTO 25, but they’ll be front-runners for future incarnations of the award, when InfiniBand helps merge the now-disparate worlds of HPC and business computing. CTO 25 Awards for 2015, anyone? Software DevelopmentTechnology Industry