SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the market and technology leader in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), today announced the appointment of Steve McWhirter as president of its Asia-Pacific operations. McWhirter brings 20 years of sales, marketing and leadership experience to the company, 15 of which have been spent focused in the Asia-Pacific market. He will report to Jim Steele, chief customer officer and president of international operations, and will be based in salesforce.com's Singapore office. He succeeds Stephen J. Russell who served as president since November 2005 and successfully drove salesforce.com's expansion and leadership in the region.
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"As a seasoned technology industry veteran, Steve McWhirter will support salesforce.com's accelerated growth and market development in the Asia-Pacific region," said Jim Steele, chief customer officer and president of international operations at salesforce.com. "We're excited to add Steve McWhirter to our leadership team. He will be a driving force in extending the benefits of Salesforce CRM and the Force.com Platform to the growing number of companies in the region ready to eliminate the constraints of traditional software from their businesses."
McWhirter joins salesforce.com from serving as vice president of HP Software Asia Pacific, a division of HP Technology Solutions Group, where he led an organization of nearly 500 sales, marketing, services and technical support staff. During his tenure, the HP Software division achieved rapid growth and successfully navigated the company's acquisitions of Mercury, Bristol, SPI and Opsware. Before HP, McWhirter held positions as vice president of Red Hat Asia-Pacific and director, APAC software sales of IBM Software Group, Asia-Pacific, among others.
"Salesforce.com has made its mark as one of the most innovative technology companies in the industry today," said McWhirter. "I'm thrilled to be joining the company at this exciting juncture for SaaS in the Asia-Pacific region as more and more companies understand and experience its revolutionary business benefits."
The Asia-Pacific region is salesforce.com's fastest growing region worldwide. For its fiscal year ending January 31, 2008, the company's Asia-Pacific revenues grew more than 85 percent year-over-year and doubled its customer base.
"Steve Russell has had a long, success-driven history with salesforce.com -- first as one of our earliest supporters when he was a customer and then in rapidly growing salesforce.com's footprint in the region over the past three years," added Steele. "We commend Steve on his tireless leadership in driving salesforce.com's momentum and customer success in the Asia-Pacific region."
About salesforce.com
Salesforce.com is the market and technology leader in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). The company's portfolio of SaaS applications, including its award-winning CRM, available at http://www.salesforce.com/products/, has revolutionized the ways that customers manage and share business information over the Internet. The company's Force.com PaaS enables customers, developers and partners to build powerful on-demand applications that deliver the benefits of multi-tenancy across the enterprise. Applications built on the Force.com platform, available at http://www.force.com/, can be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com's Force.com AppExchange marketplace available at http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/.
As of July 31, 2008, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 47,700 customers including ABN AMRO, Dow Jones Newswires, Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, Sprint Nextel, and SunTrust Banks. Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM". For more information please visit http://www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.
Copyright (c) 2008 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Salesforce and the "no software" logo are registered trademarks of salesforce.com, inc., and salesforce.com owns other registered and unregistered trademarks. Other names used herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
SOURCE salesforce.com
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