The company would make some key announcements on Monday at its annual developer conference, Benioff said, but he did not elaborate. He said it was astonishing what the company had developed in just the past six months, and what it would show its customers in September at its annual Dreamforce conference, held in San Francisco.

Benioff also shrugged off increased competitive pressure from Microsoft, Oracle and SAP, which are beginning to also delve into the on-demand software market.

We added 2,500 customers this quarter because those others software companies are selling software…yet we have more than 2,200 employees who only do one thing very well, which is sell the on-demand world, Benioff said.

Software is similar to the automobile industry, Benioff added, in that there are various makes of cars but only one Toyota, or market leader. And Salesforce.com is both the market technology leader and the market share revenue leader of on-demand software, he said.

The San Francisco-based company certainly improved its fiscal performance from a year ago, by reversing a $229,000 loss to post a $730,000, or one cent a share, profit for its most recent quarter ended April 30.

The US continued to drive sales, by increasing 50% year-over-year to $124m for the quarter. European revenue increased 71% to $26m, while Asia Pacific revenue grew 85% to $12m.

As strong as our international growth has been, revenue growth in the Americas has kept pace, said Salesforce.com CFO Steve Cakebread, on the call. We don’t see why over time our international mix won’t reach 50%.

The bulk, or 91%, of the company’s money comes, of course, from subscriptions. They grew 57% year-over-year to $147m, driven by a less than 1% attrition rate of net paying subscribers per month.

Salesforce also enjoyed a 44% spike in its professional services business, which primarily consists of consulting and training, with revenue reaching $14.7m. Gross margins for this business, however, continued to be negative.

Looking ahead, the company forecast a break-even to a one-cent-per share profit, on revenue of $171m to $173m. For its full fiscal year, Salesforce.com raised its revenue forecast to between $722m and $728m, from an earlier outlook of between $710m to $720m. It full-year expectations of a profit between 7 cents and 9 cents a share remained.

When asked about the company’s likely competitive position a year from now, Benioff said the industry was still in the early-adopter phase of software-as-a-service and just starting to pop into the mainstream.

And that SAP, Microsoft and others don’t have the product, they don’t have the passion and the energy and the insight and the enlightenment to get them there.

He added that if Microsoft or SAP were contenders in a CRM deal that the odds were Salesforce.com would also be.

Shares in the company rose 2.7% on the New York Stock Exchange to close at $45.25. They slipped slightly more than 1% in after-hours trading.