Former U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra Joins Salesforce As EVP Of Emerging Markets

CRM and cloud giant Salesforce has announced a key hire today—former U.S. Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra. Kundra has joined the company as executive vice president of emerging markets.

Kundra joined the Obama administration in March of 2009. As the first Chief Information Officer of the United States, Kundra managed more than $80 billion in technology investments and was an early evangelist of cloud computing in the public sector. Kundra also authored the ‘Cloud-First policy,’ which aims to guide government IT organizations around the world on how to be efficient with fewer resources.

Kundra also spearheaded the Data.gov initiative, which aimed to democratize data access; and launched the Federal IT Dashboard, which gives an assessment of the cost of large government IT projects

“Vivek Kundra is an amazing technology visionary who opened the eyes of millions to the transformational power of cloud computing,” said Salesforce CEO and founder Marc Benioff “His disruptive leadership is just what the industry needs to accelerate the social enterprise.”

Prior to serving as U.S. CIO, Kundra was the chief technology officer for Washington D.C. and was the assistant secretary of commerce and technology for the state of Virginia. Last June, Kundra stepped down from his position as CIO to take a fellowship at Harvard University, which was a joint program with the Kennedy School and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

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Company: Salesforce

Website: salesforce.com

Launch Date: 1999

IPO: February 7, 2004, NYSE:CRM

Salesforce is an enterprise cloud computing company that provides business software on a subscription basis. The company is best known for its on-demand Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions. Salesforce was founded in 1999 by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff, and went public in June 2004. Salesforce has been a pioneer in developing enterprise platforms through its innovative AppExchange directory of on-demand applications, and its Force.com “Platform as a Service” (PaaS) API for extending Salesforce.

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