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By Mel Duvall

Salesforce.com continued to beat the economy in the third quarter, reporting record revenue, profits and customer additions.

The company, which provides on-demand applications via a cloud computing infrastructure, reported Tuesday that its revenues soared 20% in the third quarter on a year-over-year basis to $330.5 million. Subscription and support revenues made up $306.9 million of the total, while professional services and other revenue came in at $23.7 million.

"This gives us fantastic momentum as we head into Dreamforce, where we will announce our biggest product news of the year," Salesforce.com chairman and chief executive Marc Benioff said in a statement announcing the results. Dreamforce is the company's cloud computing conference taking place this week in San Francisco.

Salesforce said its net paying customers rose by about 4,700 in the quarter, bringing its total customer base to about 67,900. Compared with a year ago, net paying customers grew by 16,100 or 31%.

The San Francisco-headquartered company is now on target to achieve annual revenues exceeding $1.3 billion. It also raised its guidance for the fourth quarter to the range of $340 to $342 million.

While the major enterprise resource planning vendors have been struggling this year to grow revenues, a number of the leading cloud computing vendors have maintained steady growth. Earlier this month NetSuite, a San Mateo, Calif.-based provider of on-demand business management software, also reported it achieved record revenues of $41.7 million for its third quarter. That compared to revenues of $40.4 million a year earlier. Net Suite said it also achieved its highest number of customer wins in a quarter, although it did not provide a number.

Earlier this month research firm Gartner predicted worldwide on-demand software (or software-as-a-service) revenues would grow 18% in 2009 to reach $7.5 billion

Here's a rundown of other Salesforce.com highlights:

• Earnings per share of 16 cents, up 100% from a year earlier.
• The company ended the quarter with $1.07 billion in cash.
• The company is projecting revenue will continue to grow 15% to 16% in the coming year.
• As of Oct. 31, Salesforce had 3,814 employees, up from 3,318 a year earlier.

Comments (1)

	1. 11-18-2009 13:08
	It's good to see some companies doing well and growing their staff, and anyone following or using salesforce.com won't be too surprised by their stellar performance; they deliver compelling functionality with rapid onboarding of new users, and do so at a healthy subscription price. Most importantly, they are focused on revenue generation which would be one of the last things to be cut by clients in times such as these. Registered

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