Salesforce.com recently reported second-quarter net income of $10 million, or 8 cents a share, in line with the mean 8-cent estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. During the year earlier, earnings were $3.74 million, or 3 cents a share. The latest results include about $19 million in stock-based compensation and $1.3 million in amortization of purchased intangibles related to previously announced acquisitions.

Revenue for the period ended July 31 rose to $263.1 million from $176.6 million last year. Analysts were looking for revenue of $260.6 million.

"By becoming the first ever software as a service company to achieve an annualized revenue run rate of one billion dollars, our second quarter performance is a milestone for Salesforce.com, and for the cloud computing industry, " said Chairman and Chief Executive Marc Benioff in a prepared statement.

"Our largest customers are increasingly becoming the best examples of what is possible using the power of our growing portfolio of software as a service applications and our emerging platform as a service," Benioff said.

Additionally, the San Francisco-based provider of on-demand customer relationship management services said it expects third-quarter net earnings of 6 cents to 7 cents on revenue of $273 million to $274 million. Excluding the effect of the InStranet acquisition, the company expects earnings of 8 cents to 9 cents a share.

The current consensus estimate is a per-share profit of 9 cents on revenue of $273.2 million for the third quarter.

For fiscal 2009, Salesforce said it expects net earnings of 29 cents to 30 cents a share on revenue of $1.07 billion to $1.075 billion. Adjusted earnings are now expected to range from 34 cents to 35 cents a share from the previous estimate of 33 cents to 34 cents a share.