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SugarCRM, the applications company, intends to become a public company within two years, said CEO John Roberts.

SugarCRM launched 3 years ago in what Roberts said was an “experiment” to use an open-source business model to create high-quality CRM applications. The company on Monday released a beta of Sugar 5.0, a major update to its application suite.

Since its launch, SugarCRM has funded its growth largely from revenue, rather than the $26 million in venture funding it raised, CEO John Roberts said.

“Now we’re at a point where we’re acquiring customers extremely fast,” Roberts said.

Roberts anticipates that the company, which now has 125 employees, can grow to $100 million in yearly revenue in the next 2 years.

SugarCRM

The open-source business model, which had not been tried in packaged applications before SugarCRM launched, is what has allowed the company to grow so rapidly and to focus on making quality software.

Doing software engineering in the open, where outsiders can view the source code, has improved the product development process.

Selling is easier, too. Because the company makes a low-end version available for free, most of its customers are already very familiar with the product and don’t require a costly sales and marketing process, Robert said.

SugarCRM’s approach can be replicated by other companies. Database company MySQL has said that it intends to go public, and middleware provider JBoss was sold to Red Hat for $420 million. XenSource, which has built its commercial product on top of an open-source hypervisor, was bought by Citrix for $500 million.

Traditional software companies spend too much on marketing and sales and not enough on research and development

“I came to Silicon Valley to write great software. But we saw this disconnect in enterprise software companies,” Robert said.

Enhancements to Sugar 5.0 focus on making the application foundation more robust and appropriate for large-scale deployments.

New features include an Ajax e-mail client that is closely integrated with the applications and a revamped on-demand version. On-demand installations account for 40 percent of SugarCRM’s customers.

The new version also includes a Module Builder that lets business users visually create and share their own application add-ons.

Tags: open-source, SugarCRM, stock market, news, Ajax, software, CRM

Development Cycle

Sugar CRM is changing the game by finding a better way to make software.
Sugar CRM offers Sugar Open Source to a community of 2,400 CRM developers and experts to use this software, and also provides feedback and develops extensions to the Sugar.
Many more motives were made Sugar CRM to be translated in 24 languages in less than 18 months. This distributed development cycle produced software that is of a better quality than closed vendors could ever produce and is more innovative. Just think those 2,400 CRM experts understand CRM market better.

Tags: open source CRM, Sugar CRM, CRM experts, software

Sugar CRM is re-thinking about how technology can and may help companies to manage their customer relationships. Sugar is the leader on market for commercial open source CRM application. That’s why it delivers a full set of business processes that improve customer satisfaction, enhance marketing effectiveness, provide executive insight into business performance and drive sales performance.
Sugar CRM is supported by administration capabilities and deep collaboration that adapt to how your company operates. Sugar is also delighting its customers of all sizes across a broad range of industries.

Sugar CRM defines the new CRM generation

Tags: sugar crm, technology, crm application, crm, open source crm, performance

Sugar CRM- Info World BOSSIE Awards Top Choice

The BEST of Open Sources software in the Mainstream Enterprise Software Market is Sugar CRM.
Sugar CRM Inc. is the leader provider of commercial open source CRM (customer relationship management) software. It seems that InfoWorld Magazine named Sugar Community Edition to be the BEST Open Source Application for CRM. It is the best open source software for business, from small offices to large companies.
Sugar CRM has always offered innovation, and with its newest release, Sugar 5.0 (in September) wants to introduce exciting new functionality. With Sugar 5.0 you have the capability to allow users to build custom modules, has a new AJAX e-mail client and “multi-instance on-demand” architecture.
Sugar CRM can be easily adapt to any business environment, can offer flexibility and cost-effective alternative for any application. Sugar CRM can be used very easy by companies to obtain and maintain profitable relationships and can also offer deployment options, like: on- premise, on-demand and appliance-based solution for better security for customers.

Tags: sugar CRM, open source, software, top choice, AJAX e-mail, modules, business environment, sugar community edition, best

Sugar CRM My Portal Module

Conclusion

This module has the role in classifying your favorite websites. You can add as many as you wish, and have different shortcuts for them in the left panel.

Here is a picture with Sugar CRM My Portal.

Clicking on the site listed will display the site in Sugar CRM.

Also you can classify the websites in personal and global.

Is this useful? I really don’t think so. If you want a true bookmark system, I recommend to get firefox or If you would like an online bookmark system see del.icio.us or check Google.

So that’s all, about Sugar CRM My Portal. I will deleted from the “it’s a must list”.

Conclusion: Sugar CRM My Portal, is a module you don’t need. Excluded from the “it’s a must list”.

Tags: sugar crm, my portal module, portal, sugar crm portal module, sugar crm tutorial

This is a short description of Sugar CRM products and capabilities. This features will be discussed later in Sugar CRM category.

Sugar CRM

Sugar CRM is a popular open source CRM. It has three main versions:

• Sugar CRM Professional (commercial) – 239$/user/year
• Sugar CRM Enterprise (commercial) – 449$/user/year
• Sugar CRM Open Source – FREE

Here is a picture, from www.sugarcrm.com with the futures of each product. This is what the team from SugarCRM is telling us, but maybe is more for the Open Source version.

Ok, don’t wait anymore and check this Sugar CRM Open Source Demo from their main site.

So, for a first view I see that Sugar CRM Open Source has:

• Portal
• Calendar
• Activities
• Contacts
• Accounts
• Leads
• Opportunities
• Cases
• Bug Tracker
• Documents
• Emails
• Campaigns
• Projects
• RSS
• Dashboard

Sugar CRM Professional - demo here:

• Portal
• Calendar
• Activities
• Contacts
• Accounts
• Leads
• Opportunities
• Quotes
• Cases
• Bug Tracker
• Documents
• Emails
• Campaigns
• Projects
• RSS
• Dashboard
• Forecast
• Reports
• Contracts

And Sugar CRM Enterprise - (the most complete one - demo here) has:

• Portal
• Calendar
• Activities
• Contacts
• Accounts
• Leads
• Opportunities
• Quotes
• Products
• Cases
• Bug Tracker
• Documents
• Emails
• Campaigns
• Projects
• RSS
• Dashboard
• Reports
• Forecasts
• Contracts

I have bolded the differences between the commercial version and the free one.

These are the main and basic functionalities of Sugar CRM. What each one is doing we will discuss later. It is important to see that the differences are very few. In my opinion the most important element that is missing from the open source version is “reports”; of course this depends on the profile of the company. But a report is always necessary.

Tags: sugar crm, crm, open source, client, management, sugar crm tutorial