Good news for the cloud. Profits were way up in Q4 2009 for Salesforce.com. And that positive news would seem to answer the lingering question that many in the business world have about the cloud: Can I trust a third party to store my proprietary business data on the web?

According to a report in a tech stock publication that I read, the cloud computing pioneer posted a 48% surge in profits, to $20.4 million, or 16 cents per share. Revenues climbed 22%, to $354 million. Apparently that performance beat what Wall Street was expecting: 15 cents per share and $342.3 million in revenues.

And incredibly, Salesforce.com attracted 4,600 new customers during the quarter, for a total of 72,500.

While this is yet another example of how well cloud services companies are faring (such as our own good fortune here at Monitis during 2009), there’s some bitter-sweetness in Salesforce’s good fortune. It’s going to get harder to pump out strong growth, as the company’s revenue base increases. That’s why Salesforce feels it necessary to keep enhancing with features such as social media capabilities.

I’ve no doubt we’ll see more growth from this amazing company, and from cloud industries, in general.