5 Cultivator of Change At Comerica: John Beran, former Comerica CIO and this year's Peter J. Kight Lifetime Achievement Award winner, says constant reassessment is key to a CIO's staying on top of his game

John Beran, the recently retired CIO of $54 billion-assets Comerica, is well known for the IT overhauls he conducted during his 16 years at the bank. "John led Comerica in massive transformation and virtualization efforts before they were in vogue," says Bruce Livesay, CIO of First Horizon. "John positioned Comerica with a technology foundation to give the bank sustainable advantage, which is aspirational for all CIOs today." For these reasons, along with Beran's contributions to industry groups, he's the recipient of Bank Technology News' Peter J. Kight Lifetime Achievement award this year.

Under Beran's watch, Comerica underwent a two-year transformation project that restructured the IT services department and enabled the bank to produce more applications in-house.

He virtualized all the bank's servers and mainframes, using IBM and BladeLogic technology, and oversaw the implementation of a next-generation network for converged voice, data and video communication, with partners Cisco and AT&T, that was completed in 2009.

The bank adopted check and document imaging and workflow processes throughout the organization during Beran's tenure. Loan documents,...