I thought this week was going to be a slow one for CIO announcements on account of turkey day.  I was so wrong.  It seems plenty of companies are scrambling to spread the word about their new CIO hires before eating themselves into a stupor, which is precisely what I intend to do tomorrow.   In fact, three companies announced new CIOs yesterday.

Juniper Networks hired Alan Boehme (pronounced “Bame,” pictured at left) as its new CIO.  He succeeds Kim Perdikou, who was appointed vice president and associated general manager of Juniper’s infrastructure business team.  He reports to the CFO and EVP of business operations Bob Dykes. Boehme joins Juniper Networks from Best Software, where, as CIO, he oversaw the company’s IT transformation as it organized seven independent business units into one. Boehme is a product of the CIO factory that is General Electric: Prior to Best Software, he was the e-Technology/e-Business CIO at General Electric’s Power Systems business. He also held senior management positions at DHL Worldwide Express and Flying Tiger, which was later acquired by Fedex.

Claudio Silvestri will join business intelligence provider Cognos on December 5 as its new CIO.  He most recently worked for Cognos’s competition—Business Objects—as its group vice president of worldwide information technology.  Previously he managed Microsoft Canada’s small business and channel organization and served as vice president of CRM eBusiness for Compaq Canada. 

Stephen Pecevich assumed the role of CIO and executive liaison to the board of directors at Broadband Wireless International just as the communications companied appointed a new CEO (Mark Ward.)  Pecevich is a veteran of the venture capital world.  Since 1995, he had served as chairman and CEO of Chathams Rowe Venture Partners.  Prior to that, he worked for Merchants Row Partners, a venture capital consulting firm. He has no apparent IT management experience.  What do you think about people like Pecevich and Donald Trump’s new marketing and sales savvy CIO, Virginia McDowell, becoming CIOs?  Use the feedback mechanism on this blog to express your opinions as to whether CIOs need IT management experience. 

Finally, Joe Vetrano wrote to me yesterday to let me know how he’s been keeping busy.  He left Cosi, the fast-casual caf¿hain (whose square bagels, sandwiches, pastry and coffee I love), as its CIO last spring, after about a year on the job.  He says because the company is still young and small, it really didn’t need an executive in charge of IT.  Since then, he’s been consulting for another restaurant company, looking for another temporary or permanent assignment, and he’s spoken on disaster recovery and selling to IT at various technology industry events in Chicago.