CRM Vendor Entellium Adopts Open-Source Strategy
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TechWeb - Availability of Entellium's code could speed development of industry-specific CRM products.
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com December 2, 2004, 12:29 PM PT. This priority jumped up two spots into second place as CRM returns into the spotlight among top software initiatives alongside directory services and open source.
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com September 13, 2004, 7:51 AM PT. This fourth priority&#39;s main focus has been improving or obtaining CRM and ERP software for the past year and a half.
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The financial services industry has adopted CRM technology with great zeal -- it is known as an early adopter market and continues to innovate in the ways it uses various modules.
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com September 23, 2004, 4:49 PM PT. This fourth priority&#39;s main focus has been improving or obtaining CRM and ERP software for the past year and a half.
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SugarCRM began in 2004 and offers its Sugar CRM package via a hybrid commercial-open source model and delivers it via onsite and on-demand modes. The company has amassed more than 3,000 customers in 30 countries, SugarCRM officials said. InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill met with Clint Oram, SugarCRM co-founder and vice president of open source community relations, at the company's SugarCon 2008 conference in San Jose, Calif. this week to talk about the company and where it is headed.InfoWorld: Can you explain the rationale behind coming up with an open source CRM system?Oram: When we first started thinking about the idea of building SugarCRM, we had spent our entire careers working in the world of proprietary software, working in the development of CRM solutions over the last 10-15 years. [CEO and Co-Founder] John Roberts has been working with CRM since 1992. And what we saw was that it was a very inefficient model, building software [and] keeping your customers very distant from your developers, having product managers in the middle of the process who may or may not actually come up with the right ideas. So what we thought was -- there?s got to be a more efficient way to build software, and we saw the success that was happening with JBoss, MySQL, and others and basically set out to build a new software company that really changed the way that CRM software was built, the way CRM software was distributed.Some of the key ideas there was to build an open source solution, to really put the power of the development in the hands of a community of developers around this and to shorten the distance between the end user and the developer. We went on from there and a variety of key ideas [have] evolved over the course of the last couple of years?. We said: Why not architect the software so that you could start off with our on-demand solution, if you don?t have any IT infrastructure in place, and as you grow the solution and as it proves its value to you and that sort of thing? then you can bring it on-site and actually integrate it more deeply with your other systems, such as your financial system, your provisioning system, your order management system.Another key aspect was the idea of a subscription model. Our focus, our philosophy, was to really focus on delivering value to the end customer, the end user, as opposed to building a lock-in model. If you look at proprietary software companies, what they do more than anything else is build a very tight lock-in model that keeps the customer entrenched in that company and makes it as painful as possible to walk away from that software solution.InfoWorld: Does Sugar leverage any open source projects?Oram: We?ve built all the Sugar application code ourselves. We sit on top of the PHP [Hypertext Preprocessor] application stack. So PHP, MySQL, Apache -- we leverage all those technologies underneath us, but the actual core code itself that constitutes the Sugar application we wrote with our community.InfoWorld: Why did you use the LAMP [Linux Apache MySQL Perl/PHP/Python] stack?Oram: That was actually a pretty strategic key decision that we made back in 2004.? When we set out, we thought we were going to build a Java application on top of Oracle. That?s what everybody was doing back in 2002, 2003, and 2004.? And as we sat down and started prototyping the application, we were actually prototyping it in PHP just because PHP was quick and fast to build a user interface in. Then we started looking at all the different PHP applications that were available on SourceForge. So that?s where we got started, and we started looking at the other PHP applications. One of the key things we looked at was we really wanted to have as many people in the world using SugarCRM as possible, and frankly, PHP is just more accessible than Java for the average person.InfoWorld: Who are you taking customers away from -- or are you just getting new CRM customers?Oram: Well, there?s a combination of both. Basically one of the fascinating things about the way the open source model works is that [with] traditional software proprietary models, you spend two years building the software solution, then you go hire a really expensive marketing and sales organization, and then you go out and [do] target marketing into specific segments, hoping that what you?ve built would meet their needs. Hoping that what you just invested in building would actually be the right solution. Open source has a completely different approach in that we build our solution, we post the Community Edition on the Internet, and downloads happen around the world. We have downloads in every country in the world happening right now. And that demand pulls us into markets. So our phone has been ringing off the hook since we first started launching the company back in 2004. We?re not targeting specific segments, we?re not targeting specific sizes of companies. Companies are calling us. We have customers from the smallest of SOHOs [small office/home office] to SMBs [small/medium-size businesses] to SMEs [small and medium-size enterprises] up to the largest of enterprise. ? We?ve taken customers away from pretty much everything, from the smallest of solutions up to Siebel's.?InfoWorld: What license are you using?Oram: Our Community Edition is licensed under the GPL (GNU General Public License) v3.InfoWorld: Why did you go with GPL 3 over GPL 2?Oram: When we were looking at the GPLv3, basically what we saw is the most modern open source public license that?s going to last for the next 10 years plus. The v2 was written over 10 years ago [and was] really designed for a different age of computing. The Internet really hadn?t taken off.InfoWorld: What is the benefit of v3 for the Internet?Oram: It?s got some provisions in there about how the distribution of the software comes into place, how the patent protection comes into place as well. It?s a more modern license and we really felt that we wanted a license that would go with us for the next 10 years.InfoWorld: What is SugarCRM's sales model?Oram: You can download Sugar, open source Sugar Community Edition today. Go to our Web site, download it from there. No restrictions around distributing it, around modifying it, all the things that you?d expect with publicly licensed software. We have three editions:? Sugar Community Edition, Sugar Professional edition, Sugar Enterprise edition. The Professional and Enterprise editions are commercially licensed products; these are the subscriptions that we sell. You can deploy them onsite or on-demand, so there?s kind of two dimensions there.InfoWorld: What?s a difference between the three of them?Oram: There?s more functionality in Professional, more functionality in Enterprise. The Community Edition has really been designed for small companies, for the SMB, SOHO environment. The Professional Edition has really been designed for SMBs and SMEs, and the Enterprise edition is designed for the largest enterprises around the world.? With the Commercial Edition, not only do you get features and functionality that aren?t available in the Community Edition, but you also get full support, training, access to professional services, all of that.InfoWorld: What?s the difference between SugarCRM and Salesforce.com?Oram: There are three key areas where Sugar really differentiates itself from Salesforce.com.? First -- and I think one of the things that people come to us first around -- is the flexibility of our deployment model. Being able to go onsite or on-demand is something that a lot of customers like. We have customers who start with us on on-demand and they intend to go onsite, but they don?t know when, and they haven?t done it yet. But they like having that flexibility. Other customers just start with on-demand and six months later they go to an onsite solution.InfoWorld: What?s the difference in functionality between what you do and what they do?Oram: From just a high-level functional perspective, we just look at the check boxes. We certainly are in the same space. We have marketing sales and customer support functionality. We have some built-in e-mail marketing capabilities that they don?t have in their solution.? Our e-mail client is a top-notch Web-based e-mail client, similar to what you might find with Google mail or Yahoo mail. You won?t see that in Salesforce.com.Our user experience is where we win the end users over. If it?s end users sitting in front of Sugar versus Salesforce or Siebel or SAP or any of these other solutions, that?s where we really win.? We?ve got the most modern architected solution on the market today, with the most modern user interface that?s designed to allow end users to personalize it to the way they want to use the application. On the home page, using AJAX [Asynchronous JavaScript and XML] technology, you can move and drag and drop the forms on the screen so that the data flows in the way that you?re looking. You have the ability to do all kind of saved searches and reports.InfoWorld: Is SugarCRM profitable?Oram: We?ve had a very good year last year.? We?re not talking about our finances specifics, but last year was a fantastic year for us.InfoWorld: You're privately held. Do you figure on going public or being bought up?Oram: We?re laser-focused on going public.? Basically the last couple years have been really about proving that this model works. We?re going public in eight to 12 quarters.? We?ve got the company absolutely laser-focused on that.InfoWorld: Is there anything else you wanted to mention?Oram: The first few years of SugarCRM were [focused on] proving that this model works, getting the software built, getting the company built. Really, [seeing] the marketplace evolving to the point where it was comfortable with the idea of purchasing commercial open source. And we?re past that now. Now this is a company that?s all about execution. We had a fantastic year last year. Basically we?re past the ?prove it? stage and now it?s about execution and it?s about focusing on going public in eight to 12 quarters.
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EnterpriseWizard this week is releasing the 2.0 version of its CRM application, a product built on top of its SaaSWizard Web application development platform and designed to be easily customizable.EnterpriseWizard 2.0 employs templates and drag-and-drop style customization of tables and fields through a browser-based interface. Users can also define business rules, sketch out workflows, and generate reports. Other new features include an improved search engine and the ability to automatically transmit information from a client computer when a trouble ticket is sent out.The SaaSWizard platform represents &quot;man-centuries of development,&quot; rather than the man-hours usually used as a measure, according to CEO Colin Earl. But EnterpriseWizard is not alone in offering end users the ability to change its application.&#160;SAP&#39;s recently unveiled CRM 2007&#160;product features an Web 2.0-style interface that users can manipulate to their liking.A difference lies in EnterpriseWizard&#39;s underlying business model. Earl said his company is looking to partner with systems integrators and value-added resellers. The company hopes they will use the core SaaSWizard platform to create and sell customized applications -- both CRM (customer relationship management) and other types -- to customers in vertical industries.&quot;Our vision is not to build these products ourselves,&quot; he said.Many on-demand software companies have the wrong idea, he argued. &quot;What I see happening in the market is the SaaS vendors have a direct sales model, and they are effectively trying to take the whole pie for themselves. I think this is a strategic mistake,&quot; he said.While the J2EE-based product is available on-demand, it is also possible to deploy it on an internal server, a fact that drew a nod from one close observer of the CRM scene.&quot;Generally, the fact they offer both on-premise and SaaS is great -- we feel customers like the choice of being able to move seamlessly between the two environments, assuming the two products are functionally the same,&quot; China Martens, an analyst with the 451 Group, said via e-mail.&quot;It&#39;s impressive they&#39;ve retained high-end customers over years such as Chevron and have a bit under 400 customers in total,&quot; she added. &quot;If they do want to garner more attention amid the plethora of their competition, we&#39;d expect them to seek some VC funding, also advice from VCs as to how to best grow their business.&quot;The company has about 40 employees and financially is &quot;very healthy&quot; these days, according to Earl, though he acknowledges that the years spent developing SaaSWizard were &quot;pretty lean.&quot;EnterpriseWizard costs $65 per staff user per month for the hosted product, and $950 per staff user if it is purchased outright on Linux, with unlimited end-user access, according to a spokesman. The company also offers the software for purchase on Windows or Solaris for about $1,150 per staff user.End users have limited capabilities, including the ability to submit and update their own records, whereas staff users -- such as sales representatives -- have a more sophisticated interface and can gain the ability to change records from other users, the spokesman said.
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Salesforce.com unveiled the 23rd version of its hosted CRM service, adding a customer portal and access to its proprietary programming language.
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InfoWorld - SugarCRM has released the 5.0 version of its open-source customer relationship management software following a long period of development and testing.
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(InfoWorld) - As SugarCRM readies the final version of its Sugar 5.0 commercial and open source customer relationship management software, the vendor is planning a new platform edition of the software for developers. Sugar 5.0 is one of the most significant releases from the open source startup since its founding in 2004, according to John Roberts, SugarCRM's CEO. Around 40 engineers at the 125-person company have been working on the release for the past 18 months, he said. Looking ahead, the vendor plans to also package Sugar as a development platform probably under the product name Sugar Developer edition. "Sugar has always been a platform," Roberts said. As well as traditional CRM functionality, third-party developers have already created other capabilities based on Sugar, including financial and human resources management modules. SugarCRM unveiled the beta release of Sugar 5.0 on Monday, with the final version of the software due out toward the end of September. As with other Sugar releases, the new version comes in three editions: one open source and the other two commercial releases for which the vendor charges for additional functionality and technical support. Formerly known as Sugar Open Source, the free edition of the software changes its name to Sugar Community Edition with the debut of release 5.0. Another difference is thatÂ SCE 5.0 will be licensed under version 3 of the GNU general public license (GPLv3)Â instead of the vendor's own Sugar Public License, a derivation of the Mozilla Public License, as had previously been the case. As before, users can deploy the commercial editions, Professional and Enterprise, in a variety of ways, including on-site and on-demand along with appliance and stack versions. Customers can move between on-site and on-demand versions of Sugar as they choose, Roberts said. In Sugar 5.0, the vendor has written a new on-demand architecture for the hosted versions of its software. The architecture is multi-instance, meaning that each customer receives their own instance of the CRM software instead of all customers sharing the same instance of the software, often known as multitenancy. The new release also gives users the ability to build custom modules and share them across their Sugar deployments. SugarCRM hopes that the new architecture will let the company compete more aggressively with current and future on-demand CRM rivals, especially market pioneer Salesforce.com. While both Oracle and SAP already provide hosted versions of their CRM software, Microsoft is preparing to roll out its Dynamics CRM Live service later this year. SAP is also planning an on-demand applications suite, code-named A1S, which includes CRM functionality and is due out early in 2008. SugarCRM has been in the on-demand market for over two years, and 40 percent of the vendor's 2,000 paying customers have opted for that deployment, Roberts said. Like other commercial open source startups, including database vendor MySQL, SugarCRM harbors ambitions of some day becoming a $1 billion enterprise player. "We've always believed we can be a large enterprise public company," Roberts said, pointing that the CRM market has plenty of room for growth since many companies have yet to invest in the software. SugarCRM is looking to go public in 2008 or 2009, he added. SugarCRM is already widening its global horizons and is in the process of opening an office in Beijing, Roberts said. To support its on-demand operations,Â SugarCRM will open a new datacenter in Europe later this year. Sugar 5.1 is due out in December and version 5.5 will likely appear in mid-2008, Roberts said. SugarCRM plans to incorporate more Web 2.0 collaborative capabilities in its CRM software such as wikis, real-time chat, and desktop sharing.
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(InfoWorld) - Salesforce.com on Tuesday unveiled a new version of its hosted customer relationship management service, which it said will add a new portal and workflow management capabilities and ease the process of writing and testing new custom applications. The new version of the service comes just days after Microsoft introduced its much anticipatedÂ entryÂ into the hosted CRM business. The 23rd version of the Salesforce.com service lets users access the company's proprietary Apex Code programming language to customize their CRM applications or write new ones to run on Salesforce.com servers, the company said. "Customers can write code that runs on our servers -- it's programming without software," said Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, in a statement. The company said that Apex Code is similar to the widely used Java language and that applications written using it can be accessed via Web standards such as XML or SOAP. The new version also adds what Salesforce.com calls Intelligent Workflow, which will allow users to add rules to business processes. A new on-demand Customer Portal can deliver Web 2.0 collaborative content to customers, the company said. The Intelligent Workflow capability will come in handy at Salesforce.com customerÂ Enviance, an on-demand environmental regulation compliance software provider based in Carlsbad, Calif., said Michele Hincks, vice president of marketing at the company. Enviance has been running Salesforce.com since 2004 for sales, marketing and customer service, but the workflow management capabilities have thus far been very rudimentary, she said. The workflow tool will allow the company to use custom fields help process new customers and perform other tasks, Hincks said. She also said she expects that marketing personnel at Enviance will be able to use Apex Code to custom-build applications, so they will no longer have to wait for IT programmers to get to such projects. "It seems it will be more usable," she said. "I can cut and paste code myself." Mike Epner, vice president of worldwide services and support at Borland Software, said that his firm will create several new applications to run on the Salesforce.com platform. In addition, Borland plans to use the new version's portal to deliver technical support content to Borland customers. "The new release continues the evolution from software as a service to platform as a service," said Denis Pombriant, analyst at Beagle Research Group LLC. "Platform as a service enables CIOs to concentrate less on keeping their infrastructures running while spending more time on deriving business benefits for their companies." The new version of Salesforce.com, called Summer '07, will be available in August.
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It adds CRM functionality but faces competition from hosted services.
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com October 5, 2004, 2:09 PM PT. This fourth priority&#39;s main focus has been improving or obtaining CRM and ERP software for the past year and a half.
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Enterprises are opening up to open source alternatives to commercial software, panelists said at the SDForum conference âOpen Source Entering the Mainstream,â held in Santa Clara, Calif., last week.
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com October 6, 2004, 7:36 AM PT. This fourth priority&#39;s main focus has been improving or obtaining CRM and ERP software for the past year and a half.
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com September 29, 2004, 2:57 PM PT. This fourth priority&#39;s main focus has been improving or obtaining CRM and ERP software for the past year and a half.
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Two leading midmarket CRM vendors released expansions of their platforms this week, branching further into the service side of CRM.