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Vivek Kundra, most famous for his appointment as the first U.S. chief information officer, is joining cloud-based CRM and social network provider Salesforce.com as executive vice president of emerging markets. The announcement came Monday during the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.

Kundra left his federal post in August, 2011 for an academic fellowship at Harvard University. His role in the U.S. post was replaced months later by Steven VanRoekel. Kundra now teams with Salesforce's gregarious CEO and Chairman Marc Benioff, who says Kundra's "disruptive leadership is just what the industry needs to accelerate the social enterprise." Kundra spoke at Salesforce's Dreamforce 2011 conference days after his departure from the federal government.

Kundra was an avid force for modernizing government IT, and established several initiatives for sharing data and providing information transparency, the use of dashboards and adoption of cloud technology for cost and efficiency improvements.

He calls Salesforce an "industry disruptor" and user of transformative technology. "I am excited to join the most innovative company in the world that is pioneering social, mobile and open cloud computing for the enterprise." 

Salesforce has prospered primarily in North American market and it was not immediately clear what the company's and Kundra's plans would be for the emerging market segment.

Jim Ericson is editorial director of  Information Management, a SourceMedia publication. You can reach him at Jim.Ericson@sourcemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @jimericson.