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By Andy McCue, 8 July 2005 14:16

NEWS The success of a CIO is gauged almost entirely on the brand strength and share price performance of the company they work for, according to new research.

The poll of the UK's largest IT departments and IT suppliers revealed Tesco is the company with the most respected IT director and IT department.

Colin Cobain, IT director at Tesco, came top of the CIO poll with 37 per cent of the vote ahead of BT CIO Alnoor Ramji with 24 per cent and Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, CIO JP Rangaswami, with 16 per cent.

Almost three-quarters of the top IT chiefs are also members of and regular contributors to silicon.com's weekly CIO Jury IT decision-maker panel, which votes on the key IT issues affecting UK boardrooms.

In addition to coming in tops for CIO respect, Tesco was voted the most admired IT department by 43 per cent of respondents, followed by BT on 35 per cent, Royal Bank of Scotland on 17 per cent and the BBC on 16 per cent. Online insurance company eSure made a surprise entrance at number five with nine per cent.

Other respected CIOs on the list include Paul Coby at British Airways and Mark Russell of Lehman Brothers, while other top IT departments include Amazon, Betfair, Dell and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

The research by Influencer50 for systems integrator 7irene polled 81 respondents from the UK's largest IT departments and systems integrators.

Mark Stevenson, consulting director at Influencer50, told silicon.com the profile of a CIO is tightly linked to the performance of their company as a whole. He added that it's hard for CIOs to be recognised externally as doing a good job if the company is not doing well on the stock market.

"The cult of personality of CIO is largely dependant on the strength of the brand they work for even though internally they may well be highly regarded," he said.

But he singled out BT's Alnoor Ramji and Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein's JP Rangaswami as CIOs who are very high-profile and well-respected individuals regardless of their company.

The survey results also highlighted the changing nature of the role of the CIO in the UK. Most of the CIOs (82 per cent) said they believe CIO representation at board level will increase within the next three years, while more than a third (36 per cent) said they see less of a role for a central IT department than in previous years.