Salesforce.com tries to make cloud computing sexy at Dreamforce (photo gallery)

The term “Cloud” typically refers to the process of running a computer application on a powerful remote server that you can access through a web browser or client.

It’s really not a very sexy topic.

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Well, don’t tell Salesforce.com that. The customer relationship management (CRM) software provider puts on a yearly conference in San Francisco called Dreamforce that gets more extravagant each subsequent year. As years go on, the conference is inching toward a more Consumer Electronics Show-style gonzo festival featuring bright, flashing lights and booth babes. (Yes, booth babes. At a cloud computing conference.)

VentureBeat attended the conference this year, where Salesforce.com chief executive Marc Benioff unveiled a whole host of new social networking-style features for its enterprise software inspired by the likes of Twitter and Facebook. Benioff was also pretty bullish on mobile and social media, going so far as to say Hewlett-Packard made the right call in spinning off its $40 billion PC industry.

You can check out a slide show of some of the sights and sounds of Dreamforce 2011 in San Francisco this year below: