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SugarCRM's CEO Leaves, Board Member Larry Augustin Appointed Interim CEO Assignment Desk Editor Open Source CRM software provider, SugarCRM (News - Alert) offers open source solutions with application design flexibility and innovative user tools so customer interactions can be improved and companies can boost their performance and sales without the need for costly or complicated proprietary apps.
According to recent reports, one of the company’s founders, John Roberts (News - Alert), stepped down on May 7th from his board seat and as CEO of the company to “pursue other opportunities.” Stepping into the role as interim CEO is board member, Larry Augustin, who commented on his blog, “SugarCRM is a thriving commercial open source business with award-winning products, a large customer base, strong financials and a thriving open source project.”
According to reports, Augustin has been a board member since February of 2005 and was the former CEO of Linux systems vendor VA Linux.
“My goals for the next 30 days at SugarCRM are fairly simple: get to know the team, customers and partners. I am looking forward to helping them to continue to execute and take the company to the next level,” said Augustin.
Augustin also commented on the increased significance of open source at the applications level and his respect for Roberts and the other founders Clint Oram and Jacob Taylor for their vision of how important this market would become when they co-founded the company in 2004.
“I knew John, Clint and Jacob were on to something and have argued for years that open source made as much sense for applications as for infrastructure,” Augustin said.
At a recent industry event, SugarCRM joined other commercial open source providers to uncover research findings from a survey “Future of Open Source,” which found open source software has become increasingly mainstream, especially in the enterprise.
Survey respondents said the top four factors that make open source software attractive include lower acquisition and maintenance costs; superior security; freedom from vendor lock-in; and better quality software.
SugarCRM’s user base consists of over 400,000 users on 50,000 installations in 195 countries.
For more, be sure to check out the Open Source CRM channel on TMCnet. Stefania Viscusi is an assignment editor for TMCnet, covering VoIP, CRM, call center and wireless technologies. To read more of Stefania’s articles, please visit her columnist page. Edited by Stefania Viscusi |