Keep your back to the wall--at least when the CFO is walking by. A new study says top finance executives are assuming a greater share of the authority once relegated to CIOs, and some are displacing the IT chiefs altogether. 

Last year, CFOs authorized 18 percent of IT investments on their own, but this year they've ratcheted that authority up to 25 percent, Gartner found in a recent survey, mostly of senior financial executives. Meanwhile, CIOs are making the decision on their own on just 5 percent of investments this year, which is less than half as often as they did in 2010, Roy Harris reports at CIO magazine.

Also worrisome is that fewer than half of the executives queried saw IT as a strategic asset. A full 42 percent of the IT teams report to their CFOs, while only 33 percent report to CEOs.

Gartner found that CIOs appear to be more enthusiastic about virtualization and cloud computing than about business intelligence--at least in the view of the CFOs surveyed. The CFOs said they are interested in using IT to improve efficiency and business processes as well as gather insight that will make them more competitive.

Another question in the survey perhaps tips the CFOs' hands, though. When asked whether they view the CIO as a strategic partner, just 32 percent answered in the affirmative. Gartner, to its credit, concedes that the finance pros' biases may have had an impact on the survey results.

For more:
- see Roy Harris's article at CIO

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