Enterprise software giant SAP has lost one of its brightest software-as-a-service stars to SaaS titan Salesforce.com, I can exclusively reveal. Steve Lucas, who spearheaded the development of SaaS at Business Objects, acquired by SAP last year, left the company at the end of June and began work straight away at Salesforce.com, where his job title is (bear with me, it’s quite long): senior vice-president of platform marketing, AppExchange and Force.com. [Disclosure: Salesforce.com is a recent client]. Steve Lucas has left SAP for Salesforce.comLucas (pictured right, courtesy of SAP) is well regarded in the industry for his track record at Business Objects and would likely be seen as an asset for any SaaS vendor. I think his appointment sends a strong signal that Salesforce.com is determined to make a success of its platform strategy, which he and I discussed in a brief call just ahead of last weekend’s holiday — more on that in moment.