SugarCRM
Enterprise-wide Strategy through Open Source

Over the years, the open source movement built on the marketplace of ideas and the scalability of collaboration is swallowing the proprietary world. Along with pouring resources into open source development, firms look for increased transparency and liberty in the CRM landscape through open source movement. Open source CRM applications provide both viable alternatives and an entry point to an enterprise-wide strategy for companies seeking to control the challenging industry requirements. Founded in 2004, SugarCRM delivers CRM solutions that are available in both open source and commercial open source applications.

“We deliver an open source solution exclusively for developers and a simpler way to find and use CRM for first-time CRM users,” Larry Augustin, CEO, SugarCRM. Born with the SaaS cloud incarnation, SugarCRM works towards building an open source CRM software with a number of breakdown editions. The company offers the most innovative and intuitive user experience on the market through its CRM solutions. Besides, SugarCRM delivers the broadest range of deployment options for on-premise and cloud and is the industry’s most highly customizable CRM platform based on open technologies. Furthermore, the source code of the application is available to any user, developer, or customer of the product. Whether one opts for the Affero General Public License Version 3 (AGPLv3) or the commercially licensed version, the application comes with all of the source code, enabling developers to customize and build upon the product.

SugarCRM Community Edition is maintaining and delivering the open source with version 6.5 released under the AGPLv3 license. The community edition comes fully featured with all the basics for sales, marketing, support automation, user, and Access Control List (ACL) management, as well as the developer tools—Studio and Module Builder—for customizing the application. Similarly, the Professional Edition is a commercial edition of the product that builds upon the feature set of the Community Edition. The most notable feature is the support for teams, where users can be grouped together by their department or job function. A reporting tool can also be enabled to run several different types of reports, many of which have charts with them that can be added to the home page.

Additionally, a web based mobile version for iPhone and Android smart phones can also be configured along with plug-ins for Microsoft Office. Because of SugarCRM’s roots as a LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) application, the basic install of SugarCRM is trouble-free.

Making an indelible mark on the world of business application, today, over 1.4 Million people rely on SugarCRM today in 120 countries. States of Oregon, the largest state organization had no single system for managing communications related to outreach and education efforts. The organization downloaded the open source version of SugarCRM code with documentation. After deploying, the core SugarCRM application started operating under 24 hours, which enabled the organization to better manage their inter-departmental communications.

We deliver an open source solution exclusively for developers and a simpler way to find and use CRM for firsttime CRM users

SugarCRM is transforming the customer experience and driving business optimization as it sets the stage for an exciting decade ahead. “We will continue our pure-play focus in CRM and will leverage our partnerships with other application providers to drive seamless integrations,” states Oram. “We will look to empower people at all levels of an organization to better understand and engage with customers over the entire customer lifecycle.”