Salesforce.com (CRM) posted revenue for its fiscal third quarter ended October 31 of $330.5 million, up 20 percent year over year, and ahead of the Street at $324.4 million. EPS was in line with estimates at 16 cents.

For FY Q4, the company sees revenue of $340 million to $342 million and EPS of 14-15 cents; the Street has been expecting $334.6 million and 15 cents.

For all of 2010, CRM now sees revenue of $1.292 billion to $1.294 billion, and EPS of 62-63 cents; the Street has been expecting 62 cents.

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On Tuesday, Vivek Kundra, the federal chief information officer, unveiled Apps.Gov, a Web site where federal agencies will able to buy so-called cloud computing applications and services that have been approved by the government to replace more costly and cumbersome computing services at their own locations.

The push to promote cloud computing is part of the Obama administration’s effort to modernize the government’s information technology systems and to help reduce the $75 billion annual budget for federal I.T. in the process.

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The tech industry’s push into health care continues today, with word that Salesforce.com (CRM) is investing in Practice Fusion, a closely held company in the electronic medical records business. It’s a small deal: Practice Fusion CEO Ryan Howard told us the investment is less than $10 million, and Salesforce will get a minority stake in an outfit with revenues of about $1 million a year. Still, it’s worth noting for a few reasons.

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In recent weeks, some big-name tech execs have said that they think the economy has hit a bottom. On Wednesday and Thursday, some smaller–although still pretty large–software companies reported earnings, and their CEOs were a little less rosy about the end of the recession.

Salesforce.com (CRM) on Thursday reported a 23 percent increase in revenue from the year-ago period. But the company lowered its full year revenue outlook from between $1.3 billion and $1.33 billion to between $1.25 billion and $1.27 billion.

Marc Benioff, CEO of the online-software maker, didn’t sound like a man who believes the worst is over. He said during a conference call that new customers are taking longer to make decisions and that existing ones aren’t expanding the way they historically have. And he balked when asked if the company’s month-by-month performance indicated any trends: “I feel most comfortable really just delivering these aggregate results right now,” he said.

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A trade organization whose members include IBM (IBM), Microsoft (MSFT) and a laundry list of other tech companies announced this week that it has formed a group to create standards for a way of accessing information over the Internet known as “cloud computing.” But the new effort is just as noteworthy for who isn’t included: Google (GOOG), Amazon.com (AMZN), Salesforce.com (CRM) and other Internet companies.

The Open Cloud Standards Incubator is part of an organization called Distributed Management Task Force.

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Take profits in Salesforce.com (CRM), Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Nemeroff advises.

Nemeroff this morning cut his rating on CRM to Sell from Hold, noting that the shares at last night’s close of $37.38 were more than $10 above his $27 target price. His view is that the company’s small and medium-sized customers “could continue to be pressured by negative economic headwinds and that subscriber attrition at existing larger customers could continue to increase over the next 1-3 years due to shelf-ware reductions from multi-year agreements coming up for renewal.”

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Yesterday’s rumors about a potential acquisition by Oracle (ORCL) of Red Hat (RHT) have apparently faded, but Larry Ellison’s appetite for doing deals is never sated. Whether or not Oracle decides to take a run at Red Hat, it is not going out on a limb to suggest that at some point Ellison is going to get the itch and make more acquisitions.

Research firm Wedge Partners today took a look at the potential targets and came up with plenty of candidates. They think the company is going to enter a more active acquisition period, with most of the focus on smaller venture-backed companies, but adds that they could do “a handful of acquisitions” in the $100 million to $500 million range. And maybe a bigger deal or two. In particular, they see Oracle targeting deals in Software as a Service, virtualization and health-care technology.

Here’s Wedge’s list of potential targets in each of the three sectors:
Software as a Service:

Salesforce.com (CRM): Wedge notes that Ellison was an early investor and still holds his position; CEO Marc Benioff is a former Oracle exec. Wedge contends that “despite the bluster from both companies,” they rarely compete. They assert that Oracle’s SaaS offering is “greatly inferior” to CRM’s.

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Salesforce.com (CRM) shares are on the rise today ahead of the company’s release tomorrow after for its fiscal fourth quarter ended January. The Street consensus is for revenue of $285.2 million and profits of seven cents a share.

A number of analysts weighed in this morning on the prospects for CRM both in the January quarter and beyond. In general, the Street seems to think that, while the business will show some signs of the economic downturn, Salesforce will continue to put up impressive growth numbers. Here’s a quick rundown on what they’re saying:

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I’ve got to confess that for the last 10 years I’ve largely ignored Salesforce.com. I knew it was growing through sales of its service, a very fancy Rolodex that helps companies keep track of customers and prospects. And I knew it evangelized the idea that applications for big companies can be delivered through Web pages rather than as software run in a company’s own data center.

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Salesforce.com (CRM) posted Q3 results that were slightly ahead of the Street, and an outlook for Q4 and fiscal 2010 that, while not spectacular, at least did not significantly miss expectations.

For the fiscal third quarter ended October 31, the company posted revenue of $276 million and profits of 8 cents a share; the Street had expected $273.6 million and 7 cents.

For FY Q4 ending in January, CRM sees revenue of $284 million to $285 million, and profits of 6-7 cents a share. The Street had been looking for $289.7 million and 7 cents.

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So, I’m skeptical about this, but in the interest of keeping you fully informed, here goes: Salesforce.com (CRM) shares are trading sharply higher today, in a move TheFlyOnTheWall.com asserts is due to “renewed takeover chatter.” This is not the first time TFOTW has reported “chatter” of this variety, and nothing has materialized before, so I’m not sure why this round of rumors is any more convincing.

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Salesforce.com (CRM) shares are trading higher this morning after Citigroup’s Brent Thill raised his rating on the stock to Buy from Hold, while maintaining a $70 price target. Thill notes that the stock had dropped 13 percent in the three days after the company reported earnings, “even after short-covering.” He notes that the company trades at 24.1 times calendar 2009 free cash flow per share, a reasonable valuation given expected 30 percent annual growth through 2010. He also notes that September and October are seasonally the strongest months for CRM’s stock. Thill notes that the stock trades at about 4.4 times enterprise value/sales, only a slight premium to the median enterprise software multiplier of four, despite expected 2009 revenue growth of 34 percent, versus 11 percent for the group.

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Following a beat-and-raise quarter last night for online software vendor Salesforce’s (CRM), the rewards are not what you might expect, with the shares down $11.60, or 17.8 percent, at $53.73. The company’s forecast for a profit of 34 cents to 35 cents for the current quarter, excluding its cost to acquire privately held Instranet, was unimpressive to the Street. But the main worry is that the company’s deferred revenue balance–meaning sales for which it has received payments that have not been recorded as revenue on the income statement–at the end of last quarter signals that new business signings may be slipping.

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Half-a-billion-dollar (market cap) Rightnow Technologies (RNOW), which sells software over the Web to automate customer support, could be threatened by this morning’s announcement from Salesforce.com (CRM) that it’s buying privately held Instranet for software to expand in the call center market, according to a report out today from JMP Securities analyst Patrick Walravens.

“Historically, Salesforce.com has not had an effective knowledge-base solution, giving RightNow a major advantage in business-to-consumer (B2C) sales cycles, which emphasize self-service,” writes Walravens.

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Salesforce.com (CRM), which is mainly known for software that helps sales executives track and manage customer prospects, today said it paid $31.5 million in cash for Instranet, a 10-year-old company based in Chicago that makes software to improve product support. Salesforce plans to move Instranet’s software, which is usually installed on customers’ computers, onto its hosted computer facilities. Instranet already has some impressive customers using its software, a lot of it in call center operations, including Comcast (CMCSA). The company’s software is used by 350,000 call center agents around the world. When I asked the company if they will be able to sell product support software as distinct from customer relationship management tools, they noted that Salesforce has already been selling form of support software for four years.

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