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A Fractional CTO in Atlanta — for B2B e-commerce companies that need technology leadership, not another vendor.

Fowara is the Fractional CTO practice of Tareq Mahmud, based in Atlanta, Georgia. I embed as the part-time CTO for B2B e-commerce and distribution companies — platform migrations, procurement/punchout integration, AI search visibility, and security — on a monthly retainer with published pricing. Local enough to sit in your Atlanta office; experienced enough that you won't need me full-time.

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Why Atlanta companies hire a fractional CTO

Atlanta has one of the deepest B2B and distribution economies in the country — medical supply, industrial, logistics, wholesale. What most of these companies don't have is technology leadership: they're run by operators who know their industry cold and are stuck choosing between agency roulette and a $250K+ full-time CTO hire that takes six months to recruit.

The fractional model is the third option: senior technology leadership ten hours a week instead of fifty, with an engineering team behind it. And local matters more than remote-work culture admits — platform decisions go better when your CTO can sit across the table from your ops team, walk your warehouse, and meet your buyers.

The engagement, briefly

One retainer, four capabilities: Commerce Platform & Migration (BigCommerce, Magento exits, ERP) · Procurement & Punchout (native cXML, no middleware fees) · AI Integration & Search Visibility · Security & Infrastructure. Every engagement runs on documented playbooks at published prices — see Services and Pricing.

Built from Atlanta, proven in Atlanta

I've been building commerce systems for thirty years, the last seventeen of them from Atlanta.

That isn't a positioning claim — it's where the work has been. Zenzii, MedSupply Partners, CoffeeAM, Baby Braithwaite, Mercy Robes, NCR, and Allied Motor Parts are all Georgia businesses, and the fourteen-year relationship at the top of that list is an Atlanta company. It includes a Georgia medical distributor now serving hospital procurement networks through a punchout server we built and operate.

19,508
products migrated in a single engagement
$0
middleware fees, vs a ~$50K three-year middleware commitment
14 years
longest continuous client relationship
30 years
building commerce systems, AS/400 to AI-first

Read the case studies

Ask the CTO

Real questions from Atlanta business owners, answered directly — no sales filter. Have one of your own? Ask below; I answer every question personally, and the useful ones get added to this page (anonymized).

What does a fractional CTO cost in Atlanta?
Fowara retainers are published at fowara.com/pricing — most engagements run a fraction of the $250K+ salary (plus recruiting time) of a full-time CTO hire. Fixed-scope work like a Technology Due Diligence assessment is priced per playbook, so you know the cost before we start. No Atlanta premium, no discovery-call pricing games.
How is a fractional CTO different from hiring an agency?
An agency sells you projects; a fractional CTO owns your outcomes. I sit on your side of the table — when an agency quotes you, I'm the one who reads the quote, and I have no incentive to make the project bigger. The difference shows up in year two: agencies restart discovery with every engagement; a CTO's decisions compound.
How many hours a week do I actually get?
Most B2B companies need senior technology leadership about ten hours a week, not fifty — a weekly working session, architecture and vendor decisions as they arise, and oversight of whoever builds. Execution capacity from my engineering team is scoped separately as playbooks, so leadership time isn't consumed by production work.
Do you work on-site in Atlanta?
Yes. I'm based in metro Atlanta and work in person for the things that benefit from it — leadership sessions, ops walkthroughs, vendor meetings — and remotely for everything that doesn't. Companies outside Georgia I serve remotely.
We're on Magento and our agency says we need a full rebuild. Do we?
Maybe — but get an independent answer before spending six figures on a dependent one. Magento 2 end-of-life is a real forcing function, and sometimes modernization (Hyvä, module cleanup, security hardening) buys years for a fraction of a migration. A fixed-price Technology Due Diligence assessment tells you which situation you're in; I've talked clients out of replatforming more often than into it.
Hospital and university buyers keep asking if we support punchout. What are they asking for?
They want to shop your catalog from inside their procurement system — Prendio, Ariba, Coupa, Jaggaer — with their contract pricing, and have approved POs flow back as orders automatically. It's called punchout (cXML). Most vendors bolt it on with middleware — the leading provider charges a $6,000 setup fee plus roughly $14,500 a year on a mandatory three-year contract, nearly $50,000 committed. Fowara builds it natively, so you sign no middleware contract and keep the buyer relationship.
Can you work with our existing developers and vendors?
That's the default. I lead whoever builds — your in-house team, your current agency, or my team when you need capacity. Firing functional vendors to install my own people is agency behavior, and it's the opposite of what a CTO is for.
When should we hire a full-time CTO instead of a fractional one?
When technology leadership is a fifty-hour-a-week job at your company — usually somewhere past 15–20 engineers or when technology IS the product. If you get there, part of my job is running the search and handing over cleanly. Several clients treat the fractional engagement as the bridge to that hire; others found they never needed it.
How fast can you start, and what do the first 30 days look like?
Typically within two weeks. The first 30 days are assessment: I read your stack the way an engineer does — platform, integrations, security posture, AI search visibility — and you get specific findings and a prioritized roadmap. No six-week discovery phase; the assessment is a working deliverable, not a sales artifact.
Do you only work with B2B e-commerce companies?
It's the specialty, not a gate. The sweet spot is B2B distributors and manufacturers — medical, industrial, wholesale — doing $5M+ with a real technology problem. If you're outside that, book the fit call anyway: if I'm not the right fit, I'll tell you in fifteen minutes and point you at what you actually need.

Based in metro Atlanta; working in person across the metro area and remotely across the US. One page, one practice — you won't find a Marietta clone of this page, and that's on purpose.

Talk to an Atlanta CTO this week.

Fifteen minutes, I'll look at your stack before the call, and if you don't need a fractional CTO I'll tell you what you actually need instead. Or just ask a question above — no call required.

Book a 15-minute fit call