Today Salesforce.com announced that former CIO of the United States Vivek Kundra is joining the company as EVP of emerging markets.

As the first ever CIO of the US federal government, Kundra was a proponent of both cloud computing and open data. Kundra left his position last summer for a role at Harvard after a massive budget cut for the data.gov initiative, but not before playing a key role in the creation of the NASA project that would eventually become OpenStack. Prior to being the CIO for the federal government, he was CIO of the city of Washington, DC. He was replaced at the White House by Steven VanRoekel.

Kundra participated in a panel on technology and government at the last Dreamforce event. A panel on government might not have been a big draw otherwise, but Kundra’s involvement made it into a hit session. Salesforce.com has a knack for bringing in big names to Dreamforce, including MC Hammer, Neal Young, will.i.am and Bill Clinton.

The company has also hired several well known thinkers within their fields, including former tech journalist Steve Gillmor as Head of Technical Media Strategy, former BT chief scientist JP Rangaswami as chief scientist and Ruby creator Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto as Chief Architect of Ruby. But Kundra is probably the most high profile of all these hires.

Salesforce.com has been taking a more consultative role, offering more strategic planning and advice on integrating cloud computing and social media into business. In emerging markets, companies, governments and NGOs may be heading to the cloud first, leapfrogging legacy infrastructure. There’s a big opportunity for someone like Kundra to shape the role of technology in these markets.