Appirio Tuesday launched a cloud-based professional service automation (PSA) solution on Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform.

Called simply Professional Services Enterprise, it’s supposed to be designed for the most sophisticated professional service organizations, delivering end-to-end support for managing people, projects, customers and transactions.

Appirio claims that the widgetry is different from other solutions in supporting a services business end-to-end, bridging the gap between how projects are sold and how they are delivered. And then of course there are the cloud’s TCO advantages.

It says it can help you make your numbers: As the quarter closes in, services executives can identify a project that has been booked but not scheduled, and assign resources to accelerate the project’s delivery to meet the quarter’s sales goals.

It also says it can help put the right people on the right projects: A practice manager working on closing a big deal can make a tentative resource request for highly sought-after individuals with certain skills level while the deal is still in the pipeline as well as help improve utilization and stay on budget.

The company got IDC to say that “Traditional enterprise apps fall short of the mark for project-based businesses; many times meeting less than 50% of the business requirements” so the time is ripe for a cloud solution tailored to large 1,000-man professional service organizations.

Pricing starts at $45 a user a month for organizations with more than 100 users.