On Wednesday, Salesforce, com reported a whopping 48% hike in its fourth-quarter earnings, mainly on the back of strong sales growth for its online business software applications.

For the three months up-to January 31, 2010, Salesforce. com revealed earnings of $20.4 Million, or 16 cents a share, compared with the figure of $13.8 Million, or 11 cents per share, posted for the previous year's fourth-quarter.

Revenue managed to rocket by 52% as well to $354 Million, from last year's revenue figure of $289.6 Million.

Analysts had expected earnings of 15 cents per share on revenue of $342.3 Million.

According to Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff, the firm is mainly benefitting from the move to cloud computing.

"While most software companies went backward last year, Salesforce. com went forward in a dramatic way", he said.