Salesforce hires ex-Oracle exec to run new unit

BOSTON, Jan 3 (Reuters) - Software maker Salesforce.com Inc (CRM.N) said on Thursday it has hired an executive who spent 12 years at Oracle Corp (ORCL.O) to head up a services business it launched last year.

The company named Polly Sumner, 53, to the newly created position of president of platform, alliances and services.

Sumner will head up Force.com, which gives customers access to the Salesforce infrastructure, allowing them to develop customized software that is hosted at the software maker's data center.

Sumner worked at Oracle, the world's biggest maker of database software, from 1987 to 1999, and was most recently president of global services for Telcordia Technologies, a privately held telecommunications software and services company.

Salesforce got its start developing software for sales force automation, hosting it on its own computers and delivering it to customers over the Internet. (Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)