SugarCRM Makes Commercial Open Source Sweet With Sugar Sales in 2004
Thursday, 30 December 2004Since starting SugarCRM in April of 2004, the three founders pursued a belief where the best CRM application designed by following popular, open source technology would gain
fast popularity and credibility and shake up an antiquated industry. The
founders saw flaws throughout the CRM industry, namely the inaccessible
product technology, the restricted software distribution methodology, and the
skewed sales and marketing costs during their combined 20 years in the CRM
industry. This encouraged them to design a new class of CRM business
applications built on a new commercial open source business model.
The SugarCRM team created an open source project called Sugar Sales --
powered by the LAMP software stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP). "The LAMP
stack is so readily supported, it allows Sugar Sales Professional to be
deployed for a minimal fee with little to no administration. It has proved to
be a responsive, stable and customizable technology that meets our complex
application requirements," says Jacob Taylor, VP of Engineering and Co-Founder
of SugarCRM.
Sugar Sales manages the efficiency and effectiveness of sales activities,
with expanded interactions between support, marketing, and billing. "Sugar
Sales was developed by leveraging the combined ideas and contributions of CRM
developers worldwide. We instantly had product insight that would have cost
millions in R&D to attain if we didn't interact with the open source community
while designing Sugar Sales," says John Roberts, CEO and Co-Founder of
SugarCRM.
In July of 2004, Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) solidified the business
concept with $2 million in "Series A" funding. "Commercial open source will
absolutely change the way businesses obtain enterprise-level solutions. The
SugarCRM team understood the problems with distribution models in today's
marketplace, and offers a unique solution that meets the tight IT budgets and
stringent product assurances," says Josh Stein, of DFJ. The funding
accelerated the development of the open source version of Sugar Sales, and
soon produced a component which allowed the product to be translated into any
language. Within weeks, Sugar Sales was translated into over 15 languages by
the open source community. In addition, it positioned Sugar Sales as an
integral tool for any multi-national CRM deployments where the user base
speaks several languages.
September 2004 became an important milestone with the introduction of
Sugar Sales Professional, which is the commercial version of the open source
product. Sugar Sales Professional delivered advanced functionality, support
and upgrades for a reasonable price. Many companies who require support or
advanced functionality find Sugar Sales Professional mission-critical to
manage their business, and leverage the visual source provided to alleviate
vendor and technology lock-ins.
The open source version of Sugar Sales continued to develop and progress.
Sugar Sales received the honor of "Project of the Month" from Sourceforge.net,
the heart of the global open source community. The project's growing
popularity in downloads, the constant praise from the public and the loyal
open source community were all critical factors in attaining this distinction.
"We were very pleased that we were recognized as 'Project of the Month.' It
shows the commitment that the open source community has for our project and
our reliance on our community to make us successful," says Clint Oram, Open
Source VP and Co-founder of SugarCRM.
Based on the open source architecture, Sugar Sales Professional became an
instant success inside the SMB market. Within two months, Sugar Sales
Professional attained its first 50 customers, as the majority of companies
were already using the open source version and were excited to buy
Professional.
In addition to the 2.0 release offering the same sales force automation
functionality as more expensive, closed source competitors, Sugar Sales
Professional introduced professional deployment options: a self-service
installation, an appliance called the Sugar Cube, and lastly, a hosted
application called Sugar On-Demand. All provide the same visual source
accessibility and support packages. Businesses either lacking IT resources or
needing an immediate solution are pleased with the Sugar Cubes and Sugar
On-Demand solutions.
Rounding off 2004, SugarCRM announced its partner program, where IT
providers who've proven their knowledge and dedication to the open source
project are named as authorized Sugar Sales resellers and hosts. SugarCRM's
partner programs currently assist in worldwide deployments of Sugar Sales.
Looking forward in 2005
SugarCRM will continue its fast pace in 2005 with the introduction of
Marketing and Service solutions which integrate into Sugar Sales. This
technology will be reinforced by newly-hired development and support
personnel. Several forward-thinking business applications will be introduced
during the first half of 2005, advancing the SMB IT performance.
Companies can rely on the same high standards in performance, open source
development, and advanced user interfaces which Sugar Sales delivered in 2004.
The SugarCRM product strategy will remain driven by the open and
straightforward communications amongst SugarCRM customers, the open source
community and SugarCRM.
Other highlights in 2005 include the first SugarCRM Users Conference and
SugarCRM Partner Summit. The plans will be announced shortly.
"We are extremely pleased with what we've accomplished in 2004. As to
2005, we have only just begun to release new innovative open source based
business applications with exceedingly low TCO -- which will offer immediate
gains while managing your core business operations," says John Roberts, CEO &
Co-Founder of SugarCRM.
Source: PR Newswire
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