Who are the very best at this daunting profession? What are their priorities, and their achievements? What companies are they from, and which industries? Come check out our list - the Global CIO 50 - featuring profiles of some of the world's top CIOs, including 10 from India, eight from China, five from Brazil, and top IT execs from many other countries.To compile this year's list of the Global CIO 50, we worked with our corporate partners at Network Computing India and with our licensees at InformationWeek Brazil for special insights and analysis within those two IT-powerhouse countries. And in China, our local expert is one of the top IT journalists in that high-growth region.

We took the excellent input from our partners in those three countries and added it to our own analysis of top CIOs from the U.S., Europe, other parts of Asia, and the Middle East, and came up with about 200 finalists. Out of that pool of exceptional candidates, we chose the final list of the Global CIO 50 based on a mix of objective criteria (company size, growth rates, market share, etc.) and subjective analysis (is IT a cost center or a strategic weapon? is the CIO a business driver, or an internally focused technologist?).

As with any such list, we found we had to leave off many richly deserving executives, and we promise to give those folks an extra look next May when we compile our next set of 50 of the top CIOs in the world: the Global CIO 50.

P.S. -- many thanks to our wonderful and wise partners at Network Computing India, led by Editorial Director Val Souza; at InformationWeek Brasil, led by Roberta Preston; and in China, Yufang Hu.