Why Signs Point to Salesforce.com Upside

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Despite concerns about insider selling, a sky-high earnings multiple, and competition on all fronts, analysts believe there is significantly more upside to salesforce.com(CRM) .

Cloud computing specialist salesforce.com has gained 51.89% year-to-date, and several analysts, including Credit Suisse's Phillip Winslow believe there is more room to run, as revenue is poised to accelerate in the coming years.

Winslow upgraded salesforce.com to "buy" on Friday, raising his price target to $185 from $145 due largely to a massive technology refresh cycle. "Propelled by replacement and expansion cycles across B2B and B2C implementations, we expect the CRM market to offer the greatest incremental revenue growth opportunity for software vendors over (at least) the next three to five years," Winslow wrote, in his research note.

San Francisco-based salesforce.com competes with technology giants such as Oracle(ORCL) , Microsoft(MSFT) and SAP(SAP) , but none of these companies has been able to overtake Marc Benioff's company in the lucrative world of cloud computing.

Salesforce has continued to innovate, and expectations are riding high heading into the company's first-quarter. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters are looking for earnings of 34 cents a share on $678.05 million in revenue. Excluding items, Salesforce earned 28 cents a share and generated sales of $504.36 million in the same period last year.