Cisco Systems, the company that designs, manufactures and sells networking equipments such as routers, just appointed Salesforce.com’s CEO Marc Benioff and Dr. Kristina M. Johnson, CEO of Enduring Hydro, LLC and former Under Secretary of Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy, as new members of their board of directors.

“We are extremely pleased to welcome Marc and Kristina to Cisco’s board of directors,” said John Chambers, Cisco chairman and CEO. “Marc has changed the face of technology through his bold ideas around cloud computing and the social enterprise. Kristina brings us an unmatched expertise in science and technology, which will help guide Cisco as we continue to innovate and transform our customers’ experiences.”

The addition of Benioff is part of Cisco’s executive shake-up done by Chambers.  According to AllThingsD, Chambers’ plan is focused on the cloud so the addition is Benioff is not surprising since Salesforce.com is all about the cloud.

Benioff founded Salesforce in 1999, specializing in SaaS and really driving the trend into the mainstream.  It wasn’t until 2004 that the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange under the CRM ticker.  They raised $110 million in their IPO.

In other news, Salesforce has been positioned by Gartner in the Leaders quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation, 2012.

“Leaders demonstrate a market-defining vision of how technology can help top sales executives achieve business objectives,” the Gartner report stated.  “Leaders have the ability to execute against that vision through products, services and demonstrated, solid business results in the form of revenue and earnings. Leaders have significant successful customer deployments in North America, EMEA and the APAC region in a wide variety of vertical industries, with multiple proof points above 500 users. Leaders are often what other providers in the market measure themselves against.”