Cloud-based CRM provider Salesforce reported its earnings for 3Q2011 and delivered its forecast for the next quarter as well.  Salesforce’s earnings have proved themselves to be a rather good indicator of the growth the “as-a-service” industry, which has seen some significant boosts lately.

The company reported a net loss of 3.76 million, or 3 cents a share, on revenue of $584.3 million.  This represents a 29 percent increase in sales, but it still fell short of analysts’ average expectation of 31 cents a share on revenue of $571.5 million (or 33 percent year-over-year growth).  Shareholders are expressing concern about the company’s expenses this quarter, and in particular the large portion of Q3’s $455.8 million spent on sales and marketing, which resulted in a 9.5 percent drop in Salesforce’s share price.

“For a stock that’s priced to perfection, priced at 30 times cash flow, this is a disappointment,” Brad Zelnick, an analyst at Macquarie Capital USA in New York, said on the “Bloomberg West” television program. “Billings is the leading metric.”

The stock declined by 9.6 percent at one point, which marked the biggest decline since August 18.

On a more positive note, the company projects earnings of $2.88 billion to $2.92 billion in the fiscal year 2013, and chief executive Marc Benioff was quick to highlight some of the gains Salesforce made in Q3.  ZDNet reported that the CEO cited a big contract with Verizon involving 87,000 sits to Chatter, Sales Cloud and Data.com, and another one with European shipping company Maersk.

 It’s also notable that Benioff listed a number of deals his company won against Oracle, especially when one reflects on the criticized cancelation of his keynote at Oracle World 2011. He prepared to discuss the social cloud and enterprise, where Salesforce is expanding rapidly. That growth is marked by its fresh acquisition of Model Metrics.