One of the most prominent figures in the UK’s IT sector has joined US software-as-a-service pioneer Salesforce.com as its new chief scientist. 

JP Rangaswami stepped down as BT’s chief scientist earlier this month. He had worked for the UK telco since 2006, before which he was CIO of investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort.

Rangaswami will "help European customers think about innovative ways to use the real-time, mobile and social capabilities provided by Salesforce apps and the Force.com platform”, Salesforce.com said in a statement.

In January 2009, Rangaswami told Information Age that he belived micro-blogging services such as Twitter would replace email as the key communication tool for businesses. "Email has corrupted itself,” he said. “Communication is based on trust, but with so much spam, and the ability to ‘blank copy’ in recipients without you knowing, there is no trust in email anymore.” 

Last year, Salesforce.com launched Chatter, a Twitter-like tool for internal communications.