UPDATE 2-Informatica Q4 beats Street on new deals, license rev

* Sees Q1 adj EPS $0.24-$0.26 vs est $0.25

* Sees Q1 rev $160-$165 mln vs est $162.4 mln

* Analyst says growth momentum has been as good as ever (Recasts; Adds analyst comment, conference call details)

By Siddharth Cavale

Jan 27 (Reuters) - Business analytics software maker Informatica Corp (INFA.O) reported market-topping quarterly results, boosted by a slew of new deals, and said it expects cloud computing and social networking to be its biggest growth drivers in 2011.

Shares of the company, which makes software that helps firms extract data from large databases and analyze business trends, rose $1.63 to $44.20 in after-market trade.

"Informatica is in the strongest ever position for our long-term growth to $1 billion and beyond," Chief Executive Sohaib Abbasi said on a conference call.

The company forecast first-quarter earnings of 24-26 cents per share, excluding items, on revenue of $160-$165 million.

Analysts on average are expecting earnings of 25 cents per share on revenue of $740.3 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. [ID:nWNAB7521]

The company expects the cloud computing industry and social networking websites such as Facebook and LinkedIN as big growth opportunities.

The company said the number of organizations using Informatica Cloud grew to over 1,300 in 2010 and it plans to expand its partnership with cloud-computing giant Salesforce.com (CRM.N).

Clients use Informatica's software to integrate Salesforce.com's cloud-based data to on-premise data.

Informatica said it has a blueprint to achieve $1 billion in revenue, with the introduction of new products such as 'Hadoop', which is used for processing large volumes of data from social networking sites.

STRONG Q4

Profit for the October-December quarter rose to $34.6 million, or 32 cents per share. Excluding items, it earned 39 cents per share. Revenue rose 24 percent to $198 million.

Informatica, said it signed 108 deals worth over $300,000 in the fourth quarter -- its highest ever in a quarter.

"Last quarter they just had 74 (deals)... and this time it's 108. So the business momentum has been as good as it has ever been," Gleacher and Co analyst Brad Whitt said.

License revenue rose 40 percent in fourth quarter.

The Redwood City, California-based Informatica's shares closed at $42.57 Thursday on Nasdaq (Reporting by Siddharth Cavale in Bangalore; Editing by Joyjeet Das)