Former BT Group executive named Salesforce.com chief scientist

Monday, November 29, 2010

Enterprise cloud computing vendor Salesforce recently announced it has appointed former BT Group chief scientist JP Rangaswami to a newly formed position of the same title.

According to a statement by Salesforce, Rangaswami will be responsible for promoting the company's apps and its Force.com platform to European customers for real-time, mobile and social use. Additionally, he will contribute to the company's product strategy.

Rangaswami is an IT veteran with more than 30 years of experience with large companies, including investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, Salesforce stated. He was employed by the BT Group for four years prior to Salesforce.

In his new position, Rangaswami will report to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.

"I can think of no one better as Salesforce.com's chief scientist than JP Rangaswami," Benioff said. "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."

According to IDG News Service, Rangaswami is known for his forward-thinking ideas and has been a proponent of open source software. However, it is unclear if he is expected to bring these ideas to Salesforce.