EDS has a whitepaper titled "The Future, Multidimensional CIO" , which is an attempt to cover how the role of the CIO has changed since its inception in the 1970's. "role continues to gain prominence and value in the modern enterprise, the multiple roles of the job are truly becoming daunting."

Many dimensions required for the successful CIO are:

1. Chief Integration Officer - The complexity created by generations of single-viewpoint implementation decisions - a.k.a. silos of legacy systems - has created an integration nightmare in most enterprises.

2. Chief Innovation Officer - Much has been said about the accelerated pace of change and the ascension of the East - India and China coming online.We know that innovation is coming from all directions and sources - and in an environment of increasing change, it must be understood, cultivated and managed.

3. Chief Irritation Officer - Change isn't what most organizations - or people, for that matter - actively seek. While corporations and government entities are often established to optimize current processes, they don't innately embrace continuous change.

4. Chief Identity Officer - Identity management is a critical capability to optimize the flow of information to partners, customers and employees.

5. Chief Inoculation Officer - Security is a make-or-break proposition in today's enterprise. The news is full of stories about hackers, worms and phishing expeditions, and they're a CEO's nightmare, both politically and financially.

6. Chief International Officer - In his book The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman points out that every enterprise must consider the international implications of a flat world. In the first years of this century, the world got connected and business began to flow across geographic, political and economic borders.

7. Chief Investigative Officer - IT is one of the most rapidly advancing business disciplines. Whereas Moore's Law predicted a doubling of computing power every 18 months, multiprocessor core chips are now poised to increase throughput by 15 to 100 times within that same period.

8. Chief Information Officer - Sure, you already knew this. But let's put the focus on information, not information technology. A 2003 University of California, Berkeley study stated that the amount of uniquely digitized information is "expected to double every year for the foreseeable future."

Roles for the CIO to avoid:

1. Chief Inertia Officer - Inertia is defined as "a property of matter by which it remains at rest or in uniform motion in the same straight line unless acted upon by some external force."

2. Chief Impediment Officer - IT must be a business enabler, not a business impediment. Increasingly, applications are moving closer to business end users.

3. Chief Inefficiency Officer - The efficiency of the enterprise is often tied to the efficiency of the IT capabilities underlying and supporting it. Maintaining the efficiency of the IT infrastructure is becoming a more demanding chore.

Author is Jeff Wacker is an EDS Fellow with more than 32 years of business experience.

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Prashanth Rai