The US government warnings about tainted imports from China are ominous and ongoing. In July 2007 poisonous chemicals were found in toothpaste. This was just a month after imports of farm-raised Chinese seafood and lead paint in Thomas the Tank Engine toy trains were detained. And May had seen contaminated pet foods sicken and kill thousand of US cats and dogs. Now its humans, when earlier this month every parents' nightmare became a reality: Melamine contaminated infant formula poisoned more than 50,000 Chinese infants and resulted in at least four deaths.

When I started in IT at insurance company MetLife in 1970, my background was as far away from insurance as you could possibly imagine. I was an engineer, and I had studied towards a doctorate in solid-state physics.

According to the Boston Consulting Group, between 1992 and 2006 around 58.3 per cent of all mergers and acquisitions (M&As) not only failed to create shareholder value but actually destroyed it, resulting in a net loss of 1.2 per cent across all transactions.

When Rich Phillips became COO OF Maritz Travel about two and-a-half years ago, he sat down and took a hard look at the big industry picture

To call Clyde Thomas a high performer would be an understatement. As CIO and executive vice president of global operations and technology for eFunds, a $US600 million financial services company, Thomas logs nearly 70 hours a week on the job. He oversees five data centres in the US and two abroad, managing 450 people who serve 6000 users overall. He is responsible for the company's software engineering, call and data centres, and security. He is also building new enterprise projects in China and Eastern Europe

IT is splitting up. It's not petty squabbling that's causing the break-up. No, this is a sign of maturity. CIOs in larger organizations are dividing their staffs into two major groups: one that negotiates with the business on IT strategy and IT project choices and manages the delivery of those projects (among other management consulting-type duties), and a second group that manages the infrastructure and delivers new applications (among other traditional tactical IT duties)

CIOs get bombarded with requests; everything from vendor cold calls to staff needing project approval to board members digging for cost-cutting ideas. And despite the deluge, IT execs must learn to keep their staff, executives and customers happy. Keeping smiles on all those groups requires that good CIOs know every role in the business, but how many people really know the role of the CIO?

In June, Coles Chief Executive John Fletcher went to bat for his CIO and the company's IT team via a letter to the editor after a comment piece appeared in The Australian Financial Review, which mooted that due diligence briefings had revealed "allegations of IT cost overruns and implementation delays which are said to be threatening the transformation of Coles' supply chain . . ." In a timely interview, Fletcher talks with CIO magazine's Beverley Head about the company's IT and his take on the controversy that arose during the takeover.

The relationship is much more sophisticated these days, throughout the corporate world. In Coles, technology requirements are defined by the business and IT working together, based on the business's strategic objectives.

CIO magazine's Beverly Head asked Coles CEO John Fletcher and CIO Peter Mahler about the company's IT and the controversy that arose during the takeover. Here are their answers:

The Coles takeover triggered an unprecedented public discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of its IT capabilities