If there are two words open source CRM provider SugarCRM (News - Alert) wants you to associate with its soon-to-be-released flagship CRM application, those two words would be "simple" and "speed."

"This is really focused on speed and simplicity," Clint Oram, SugarCRM co-founder and vice president of products said about Sugar 6, now in beta and scheduled for general availability in July, according to industry observer Rick Whiting.

It has an overhauled user interface - what Whiting calls "the first significant update to the UI since the product's initial release more than five years ago" -- and such tweaks as a shortcut bar at the top of the window "that makes it easier to navigate through the application in fewer clicks," Whiting reports Oram saying in a phone briefing.

It'll find a receptive market. "SugarCRM was one of the most heavily anticipated enterprise applications to arrive on the System i server when SugarCRM announced support for the platform three years ago," industry Alex Woodie notes.

As Woodie says it's "difficult to determine how many System i shops have adopted PHP or SugarCRM," but certainly the open source CRM application "is still one of the most advanced and feature-rich enterprise applications that PHP- and MySQL-enablement has opened up to the System i installed base."

At SugarCRM's SugarCon 2010 earlier this month the vendor announced a Sugar iPad application, which they described as "a fully customizable CRM application that uses the iPad's user experience capabilities."

It was developed on Appcelerator Titanium, which enables web developers to build native iPad applications that feature native performance, native iPad user interfaces, and native access to iPad's device capabilities.

SugarCRM offers an open-source "community" version of the application and sells an enterprise edition of the product, Whiting says, adding that "Sugar 6's enhanced UI improves the application's interoperability with other Web applications and mobile devices, according to the company."

And of course there has to be the obligatory nod to "social networking" and "collaboration." Larry Augustin, SugarCRM CEO, tells Whiting that "Sugar 6 delivers a look, feel and user experience that consumers of popular social networking and other collaboration tools will appreciate."

Sugar 6 will also be one of the first native applications on the market for Apple (News - Alert)'s iPad