Salesforce.com appoints former Oracle exec as president, vice chairman

Salesforce.com has a new executive in the mix. The CRM giant announced on Thursday that it has appointed Keith Block as president and vice chairman.

Also appointed to the San Francisco company's board of directors, Block will be responsible for leading Salesforce's global sales, customer support and consulting services units. The news was mentioned in an earlier ZDNet story about Salesforce's ability to diversify from Oracle databases. JMP Securities analyst Patrick Walravens was the first to flag Block's move. 

See also: Salesforce's biggest acquisition yet: ExactTarget for $2.5B

Block joins Salesforce after 26 years of working for its industry partner and often times foe: Oracle.

Previously serving as Oracle's executive vice president of sales and consulting for North America, Block led an 11,000-person team and was touted to have "built a multi-billion dollar sales business unit that achieved record revenue growth and margin expansion over the span of 10 years."

He also served as an executive officer and as a member of the executive committee at the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based tech giant.

In prepared remarks, Block hinted at his game plan for his new gig at Salesforce, commenting that he is excited to "help pave the way to $10 billion by delivering innovation, growth and customer success."

To clarify, Salesforce CEO and chairman Marc Benioff has reiterated his own goals for the cloud company to jump from $3 billion in annual revenue to $10 billion.