SugarCRM (News - Alert), the world's premier provider of open source customer relationship management software, has continued to show significant grown rates, fueled by impressive customer wins, as well as continued expansion of its global partner network.

The highlights of the growth include a 50 percent year-over-year growth in billings, and the addition of more than 540 new customers in the second quarter of 2010, including leading organizations such as Budget Rent-A-Car, H. D. Smith Wholesale Drug Company, ACE Asia Pacific, Robbins & Myers and Hunter Industries.

"SugarCRM was an easy choice based on its attractive price point, intuitive features and the proficiency of the consultants at SugarCRM partner Levementum," Jeff Falk, director of marketing at Hunter Industries, says. "With all of these clear benefits, and the flexibility Sugar Professional offers as an open solution, SugarCRM has already exceeded our expectations."

More than 200,000 times in the quarter, the SugarCRM's Free and Open Source (News - Alert) AGPL-licensed Community Edition was downloaded. Also, in the period, many customers upgraded to Sugar Professional Edition from Community Edition, including leading companies like a division of H. D. Smith, a customer-focused national supplier of healthcare products.

"Sugar Professional provides us with the tools to build upon the strong CRM foundation we started with Sugar Community Edition," Keith Schoonover, director of IT at H.D. Smith, says. "We are eager to capture and implement more insight with Sugar Reports for our customers, and our business will benefit from enhanced team management and security features as well."

Since the beginning of 2010, SugarCRM has added dozens of new global channel partners. Some of the recent partner additions include Accent Gold, the number one selling Act! Reseller in North America, as well as Castle CRM, the number one selling SalesLogix reseller in North America.

"Our continued channel partner momentum is a testament to the fact that SugarCRM offers the most upside and value for not only our partners, but also their customers," Jeff Campbell, vice president of worldwide sales at SugarCRM, said. "Whether it is providing powerful, open solutions or the need to run in multiple cloud environments, no other CRM solution offers this degree of flexibility for partners and users."

Several industry accolades have been garnered by the SugarCRM's strong channel momentum. In the "Open Source Top 50" report issued by The VAR Guy, the company was ranked number four.

In related news, SugarCRM will release several functional and performance testing tools under open source licenses for use with web-enabled applications, including all versions of SugarCRM's award winning applications.