SugarCRM, a vendor of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, has announced that it will host the first ever SugarCRM Global Developer Conference, May 3-5, 2007, at the Sainte Claire Hotel in San Jose.

All the usual suspects, HP, Intel, Microsoft, MySQL, Novell, Pervasive, Oracle (News - Alert) and Sun, have signed on a sponsors of the conference, described by SugarCRM officials as "is designed for developers, administrators, users, and managers of CRM projects."

The conference offers over 40 sessions, including a keynote address from SugarCRM CEO John Roberts with special guest Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems (News - Alert). Breakout topics include "Building a Business Around SugarCRM" from community member David Moceri and "Implementing SugarCRM in the Developing World" by SugarCRM partner David O'Keefe.

Since its founding in 2004, SugarCRM has built a large CRM community with over 30,000 members, including 8,000 registered developers. The product won Customer Inter@ction Solutions' 2006 Product of the Year.

Early this week Canonical Ltd, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, announced the availability of Sugar Open Source for users of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS edition (Long Term Support).

The "simplified deployment process" and "ease of use" of Ubuntu, combined with SugarCRM's feature-rich business processes, is designed to help companies "build better customer relationships at a lower cost," according to SugarCRM officials.

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS is freely available, including security updates for five years on servers, with no restrictions on usage. Businesses can download and install Sugar from the Ubuntu repository using the integration that Canonical and SugarCRM have developed.

SugarCRM's Web 2.0 architecture and AJAX-enabled user interface offers a product in the customer relationship management market. Sugar Open Source has been translated into over 50 languages and over 300 extensions have been built to enhance and extend the application.

"Demand for Ubuntu is growing rapidly among SugarCRM customers who require enterprise-level performance and reliability when running Sugar. Ubuntu offers a great user experience and vibrant community that complements SugarCRM's open source project," said John Roberts, Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of SugarCRM.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMC (News - Alert) Net.  For more articles please visit David Sims' columnist page.