The latest issue of CIO Magazine has an article on Life Among the Seriously Bored.  The article makes the case that fundamental changes in how IT is done has taken the excitement and challenge out of being a CIO.  Among the changes are vanilla implementaions of things like CRM and ERP systems.  The other problem, say the author, is that good CIOs solve the problems (or run up against the barriers put in place to keep someone from solving the problems) and then are bored.  There's some truth to this.