Open Source Apps Developer SugarCRM Releases Sugar.Sales 1.1Open Source Apps Developer SugarCRM Releases Sugar.Sales 1.1

Open source customer relationship management application developer SugarCRM Inc. has announced the immediate availability of Sugar.Sales 1.1 for worldwide download at http://www.sugarcrm.com. Sugar.Sales represents a new generation of commercial grade CRM applications built for and optimized to run on a pure Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (LAMP) open source software platform. Made available under an open source software license, Sugar.Sales was developed leveraging the combined ideas and contributed code of CRM developers worldwide. The result, according to SugarCRM, is a customer relationship management application on par with the proprietary and expensive applications from established CRM software and hosting providers.

Designed to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of sales forces, Sugar.Sales 1.1 delivers all the core sales force automation functionality required to manage large selling organizations. From managing new leads to closing opportunities, Sugar.Sales both helps sales professionals win business and helps sales managers identify trends and drive results. Core Sugar.Sales modules include lead tracking, contact, account, opportunity and activity management, and an executive dashboard with pre-built charting, including sales pipeline analysis. SugarCRM is also beta testing a Microsoft Outlook Plug-in that allows sales professionals to easily attach emails to contact and account records contained within the SugarCRM database.

Prevalent Networks, an early adopter of SugarCRM, has already deployed Sugar.Sales for its sales force. "After using a commercial CRM package that required supporting software on desktops, Prevalent Networks is excited to be using an open source alternative that gives us better, browser-based functionality. Sugar.Sales is a terrific application which we are already using to grow our business and communicate more effectively," says Jonathan Dambrot, Partner.

John Roberts, CEO of SugarCRM Inc., predicts that commercial open source applications will dramatically change the CRM business applications market: "When you build a commercial grade CRM application utilizing the combined ideas and resources from CRM developers across the globe, you simply produce a better, more revolutionary product than any one proprietary software or hosting company can think-up and build on its own."

Sugar.Sales was conceived, designed, built and tested on the Internet in near real-time. In less than two months SugarCRM has had over 6,500 downloads of its software and over 100,000 visitors to its open source project and sugarcrm.com websites.