SUBSCRIBE TO TMCnet
TMCnet - World's Largest Communications and Technology Community

CHANNEL BY TOPICS


QUICK LINKS




SugarCRM Joins Microsoft's Vendor Alliance

TMCnews


TMCnews Featured Article


November 14, 2006

SugarCRM Joins Microsoft's Vendor Alliance

By David Sims, TMCnet Contributing Editor


SugarCRM Inc. has announced its membership in the Interop Vendor Alliance with Microsoft (News - Alert).

The Alliance was established to "connect people, data and diverse systems through better interoperability," according to SugarCRM officials. SugarCRM, a vendor of commercial open source products for both on-site and on-demand CRM, has joined with member companies to ensure interoperability for its customers.

In February of this year, SugarCRM and Microsoft announced a technical collaboration project when SugarCRM became the first commercial open source application vendor to adopt the Microsoft Community License and introduced a Windows-based distribution of SugarCRM. 

Today nearly 35 percent of SugarCRM's customer base runs on Microsoft Windows Server.

At Microsoft TechEd: IT Forum 2006 in Barcelona, the Little Ole Software Company From Redmond has announced the formation of the Interop Vendor Alliance, which they describe as "a global, cross-industry group of software and hardware vendors that will work together to identify opportunities for enhancing interoperability with Microsoft systems on behalf of their customers."

In September SugarCRM, which likes to call itself "the world's leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management," announced a collaboration with software as a service vendor WebEx where Sugar Professional will be available via the new WebEx Connect application grid.

Sugar Professional is SugarCRM's commercial open source CRM application, serving "more than 800 customers in over 40 languages," company officials claim.

Sugar Professional provides a single view of customer interactions across sales, marketing and service, as well as campaign management, opportunity tracking, account management, sales forecasting and customer support capabilities, with reporting and collaboration tools.

"The future of software is based on open applications integrated into a single service," John Roberts, chairman and CEO, SugarCRM is fond of saying.

In July SugarCRM announced the beta release of Sugar 4.5, its popular CRM product. Sugar 4.5 introduces such new functionality as personalized views, internationalization and support for Microsoft Windows Server products.

That marked the eighth major release for the company in two years.

Microsoft officials say the notoriously go-it-alone vendor "has increased its efforts to deliver interoperability by design," with commitments to open specifications that include Web services, open document formats, virtualization, anti-spam technologies and technical collaborations with open source providers such as Novell (News - Alert), Zend Technologies Ltd. and XenSource, as well as significant interoperability testing for applications and hardware for Windows Vista and 2007 Microsoft Office system releases.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims' columnist page.








Technology Marketing Corporation

2 Trap Falls Road Suite 106, Shelton, CT 06484 USA
Ph: +1-203-852-6800, 800-243-6002

General comments: [email protected].
Comments about this site: [email protected].

STAY CURRENT YOUR WAY

© 2024 Technology Marketing Corporation. All rights reserved | Privacy Policy