This week I made the decision to join SugarCRM, the up-and-coming Commercial Open Source CRM software vendor that has been growing rapidly all over the world. At first examination, SugarCRM looks like your typical open source play. They can create software "faster, better, cheaper" due to the ability to leverage the open source community. Upon further examination, there is something far more amazing about SugarCRM, and these are the reasons why I am joining the company.
1. SugarCRM isn't a CRM "me too" to Salesforce.com. After spending several hours working with the application, it becomes quite clear that the features and functions available within SugarCRM far surpass that of Salesforce.com.
2. Open Source provides SugarCRM with a worldwide developer community that pushes product development at hyper speeds while actually increasing product quality. Gone are the days of long release cycles and slow product management prioritization schedules.
3. The open source community allows SugarCRM to decrease product development costs which are passed to the end customer in the form of lower license fees.
4. Most importantly, SugarCRM provides an on-premise solution for sales, service, and marketing organizations looking to install CRM software on-site and customize it to their needs using open standards. It is this point that really allows SugarCRM to distance itself from Salesforce.com and compete with the two existing on-premise solutions, Oracle and SAP. I believe that it is a "no brainer" for any IT department to recommend SugarCRM over proprietary, monolithic solutions like Oracle and SAP. While SugarCRM has points 1, 2, and 3 over Salesforce.com, it has point #4 over every CRM vendor. With over 70% of the CRM market expected to remain on-premise due to a desire to keep customer data in-house, SugarCRM is poised to grow quickly over time.
"If you can't beat them, join them....." - David Gearhart, Regional Vice President, Sales at SugarCRM
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