As my colleague John Soat at sibling publication InformationWeek points out in his latest entry in the CIOs Uncensored blog, Citi is "looking for a lot from Lippert" and CEO Vikram Pandit is hoping his newest technology chief can drive "enterprise transformation." Soat also adds that the appointment highlights a couple of other CIO trends. First, that Wall Street firms rarely have trouble finding the best and the brightest and that Lippert was the latest CIO to be hired from the outside, a growing trend these days.

But, most surprisingly (or maybe not), a couple of readers were very skeptical of placing so much responsibility and expectations on the CIO. It's true that analysts have been pointing to the CIO as a key driver of change for years, but in practice change is driven from even higher levels of an organization. If Lippert succeeds, it will be a great story to tell and it will come to fruition only if Pandit fully embraces change at Citi, something he appears to be doing. I hope for success, but either way it will make for a great article!