Salesforce.com Appoints JP Rangaswami as Chief Scientist

London, Nov. 24 , 2010 – Salesforce.com [NYSE:CRM], the enterprise cloud computing company, today announced the appointment of JP Rangaswami to the newly created position of Chief Scientist .

At salesforce.com, Rangaswami reports to Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. In his new role, Rangaswami will help European customers think about innovative ways to use the real-time, mobile and social capabilities provided by Salesforce apps and the Force.com platform. He also will contribute to salesforce.com’s product strategy as well as promote the benefits of cloud computing globally. He is salesforce.com’s first Chief Scientist.

Background of JP Rangaswami:
• Rangaswami brings 30 years’ technology experience with large multinational companies.
• Before joining salesforce.com, Rangaswami spent four years at BT in London, most recently as Chief Scientist of the BT Group.
• Prior to joining BT, Rangaswami was global chief information officer at investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, which he joined in 1997. While there, he established his reputation for innovation within the enterprise, culminating in a series of Harvard Business Review case studies.
• Rangaswami is chairman of School of Everything, an educational startup that teaches a broad range of socially focused topics via the web. While Rangaswami resigned his post as chairman of Ribbit when he left BT, he remains on the board as a non-executive director. He is also a venture partner at Anthemis Group.
• Rangaswami earlier held a variety of leadership and technology positions at Burroughs Corp., Data General and Hoskyns Group.
• Rangaswami holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Statistics from St. Xavier’s College, University of Calcutta.

Rangaswami, 53, has received numerous industry awards throughout his career. In April, he was ranked no. 18 in the Wired 100, Wired magazine’s list of the most-influential “digital powerbrokers.” In 2007 and 2008, Rangaswami was among the 50 most influential people in technology in the silicon.com Agenda Setters poll, which cited his “vision and innovation rarely seen in CIOs.” In 2004 he was European Technology Forum’s CIO Innovator of the Year, and in 2003 he was named CIO of the Year by Waters Magazine. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Arts and the British Computer Society. He writes about ways to avoid information overload in his blog, Confused of Calcutta. Rangaswami was born in Calcutta and moved to the U.K. in 1980, where he began work as a technical writer for Burroughs.


Comments on the announcement:

“I can think of no one better as salesforce.com’s Chief Scientist than JP Rangaswami,” said Marc Benioff, CEO of salesforce.com. “He has the rare talent of being able to see what the future should be, knowing what it takes to get there, and the enthusiasm to make it happen. He is a true innovator, and I am thrilled he’s joined salesforce.com.”

“I’ve long thought that it’s only a matter of time before enterprise software consists of only four types of application: publishing, search, fulfillment and conversation,” said Rangaswami. “Salesforce.com – with its cloud-based enterprise apps that are social, mobile and real-time – is already making that vision real and I look forward to helping shape the future of enterprise software.”