Tal will lead Redkite’s strategic partnerships, deepening Redkite’s relationships with leading cloud technology companies. In addition, Tal will leverage his years of experience in design and delivery of cloud solutions to advise clients on the principals of moving to the cloud and how to build integrated solutions leveraging best of breed technologies.

Tal joins Redkite from Hearsay Social, a leading social media platform built for enterprise clients, where he educated clients on the use of technology to manage social media strategies. In addition, Tal has years of experience implementing Salesforce for enterprise clients, both as an employee of Saleforce.com and as a Vice President at Citi, where he was the program manager responsible for the replacement of Smith Barney’s wealth management platform for more than 20,000 financial advisors. With Salesforce, Tal designed and implemented solutions for clients across financial services, hospitality, high tech and shipping.

“We are very excited to bring Tal on board,” said Brennan Burkhart, Redkite co-founder. “He has been on our radar since we started Redkite, and has only gained more experience since then with his roles at Salesforce and Hearsay Social. He brings unique perspective to the management team and both extends our vertical expertise and adds new technologies to our tool kit, enabling us to provide even greater value to our clients.”

About Redkite

Redkite is a Salesforce solution provider founded by delivery professionals who have pioneered the design and deployment of cloud solutions to enterprise clients since 2004, on more than 150 implementations for Fortune 500 companies. Redkite provides a wide range of services for Salesforce customers including cloud strategy and advisory, custom implementations. Redkite also provides advisory and development services for leading companies building products the Force.com platform. To learn more about Redkite, please visit www.redkitetechnologies.com.

While we’re sorry to have to pull the app, we’re also very proud of it, and extremely thankful for the support we’ve received since it was released last November. Despite only being available for 11 months, the app is the 2nd highest rated free app of all time on the Salesforce AppExchange, and the highest-rated free app released in the last 5 years.

In the coming weeks and months, we intend to share some of the lessons learned building the app, including some of the technical challenges of working with the LinkedIn API.

Thank you once more for the generous support you’ve given the app. If you enjoyed using the app, we always appreciate 5-star reviews. Although it’s the end of the road for in|force Connector, we think it would be a fitting epitaph to receive a “Best of 2011, App of the Year” award — and these are determined by the number of reviews and the overall rating.

We’ll be back soon with more apps. If you haven’t seen it already, Redhot News is the slickest app out there for seeing news stories on your accounts and contacts directly in Salesforce. Check back soon for news of our CrunchBase connector and our powerful Call Sheet + List Builder application.

Redkite will be there with a booth, so please drop by and see us. We might even have some new (previously-unseen) products to demo.

Full event details, including registration, here.

Install and Let us know what you think.

Redhot News brings you the latest news stories for your Accounts and Contacts. Stay better informed, email interesting articles to your contacts, share with your colleagues via Chatter or post to your social networks.

• View the latest news stories on your Accounts and Contacts right in their Salesforce pages.
• Send articles to your contacts — e.g. to congratulate them on that promotion or big deal they just closed.
• Share articles with your colleagues via Chatter.
• Post news stories to your favorite social networks, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn (Google+ coming soon).
• Articles come from Google News so you can be sure you’re seeing all the top stories.

To be included in the draw, you must:

• Have us scan your details at our Dreamforce booth, and
• Install the Redhot News application into your company’s Salesforce (or have somebody at your company install it) any time between now and September 30th, 2011.

We will draw a winner during the first week of October and post the details here on our website.

Good luck!

Redkite employees, clients and partners are not eligible to participate. Sorry.

As Head of Technology, Derek will oversee Redkite’s technology delivery methodologies, and its development and data services teams. Derek will also be responsible for building out Redkite’s offshore delivery team and extending the company’s capabilities into new cloud technologies.

Derek joins Redkite from Fujistu Consulting, where he was Director of Technical Consulting. Since 2004, Derek has led some of the most complex integrations for Salesforce’s enterprise financial services clients and has been responsible for some of the earliest back-office integrations with Salesforce’s API and custom UI-level integrations.

Vincent Ip will head up Redkite’s research and product development efforts. Vincent joins with more than 6 years Salesforce development experience on over 20 Salesforce implementations with Fortune 500 companies. Vincent has been working with the Redkite team as a hired gun since 2009. He was the lead architect of Redkite’s successful in|force Connector, which enables Salesforce users to view LinkedIn® profile data directly within Salesforce contact pages. The in|force Connector has been in the top 5 most downloaded Appexchange products since its launch in November.

“We are very excited for Derek and Vin to join the Redkite leadership team,” said co-founder Brennan Burkhart. “These guys have been pushing the threshold of custom development and integration with Salesforce for the past 6 years. Their combined experience is truly unmatched in our industry. Both will play a key part in our strategy to deliver high-end strategy, design and implementation services to our clients.”

About Redkite

Redkite is a Salesforce solution provider founded by delivery professionals who have pioneered the design and deployment of cloud solutions to enterprise clients since 2004, on more than 100 implementations for Fortune 500 companies. Redkite’s professionals have led many of the largest and most advanced implementations of Salesforce CRM in the world. Redkite proudly brings this same excellence in strategy, design and delivery to clients of all sizes. To learn more, visit us at www.redkitetechnologies.com.

Our LinkedIn Connector for Salesforce is now the most popular free app on the Appexchange!

Get in on the action here.