SugarCRM Launches SugarExchange, a Global Marketplace for CRM Applications

SugarExchange already offers 100 applications approved by SugarCRM for production use, including more than 40 solutions available for purchase today

CUPERTINO, Calif. (October 04, 2006) –

SugarCRM Inc., the world’s leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, today announced the availability of SugarExchange, a marketplace of Sugar community-built applications and extensions for SugarCRM end-users and administrators. SugarExchange offers production-ready community extensions as well as Sugar packages and components to meet all the needs of a Sugar implementation. SugarExchange is available today at http://www.sugarexchange.com.

“SugarExchange is a logical extension of the commercial open source business model,” said John Roberts, chairman and CEO, SugarCRM. “This marketplace, combined with the SugarForge.org open source development community, gives the worldwide community of Sugar users and developers an end-to-end solution for developing, testing and purchasing SugarCRM extensions.”
Combining SugarForge for Development and SugarExchange for Production

SugarExchange builds on the success of SugarForge, the world’s most popular open source community site for CRM applications. SugarExchange showcases community-built products pre-approved by SugarCRM for production deployments. Today, customers can download and install more than 60 applications from SugarExchange at no charge. More than 40 products are available for sale. The new marketplace complements SugarForge.org – the SugarCRM developer collaboration environment with 6,000 registered developers and 250 freely-available applications and extensions.

“SugarExchange gives developers the opportunity to write great software and get paid for their efforts,” said Val Cassidy, CTO of Xoetrope, an independent software vendor (ISV) who markets a rich client version of SugarCRM on SugarExchange. “The combination of the SugarForge development environment and the SugarExchange marketplace gives ISVs great visibility among the large community of SugarCRM commercial and open source users worldwide.”
SugarCRM Community-Built Products for On-Site or On-Demand Deployments

SugarExchange products can be deployed as a software service through Sugar On-Demand or behind the corporate firewall through Sugar On-Site depending on a company’s technical and business requirements. For Novacoast, which supplies an integration connector between SugarCRM and the Asterisk open source telephony system, SugarExchange provides the flexibility to deploy the solution On-Site.

“SugarExchange opens up a large market for Asterisk VoiceRD,” said Eron Howard, Manager of Development Services at Novacoast. “Companies are increasingly tying their CRM into telephony systems within their data centers to better manage customer relationships.”

rPath, provider of the first platform for creating and maintaining Linux software appliances, offers the Sugar Appliance, a turnkey Linux and SugarCRM solution for IT data centers. “SugarExchange reduces the time-to-value for assessing and implementing business critical infrastructure and applications,” said Nathan Thomas, Director of Field Engineering at rPath. “This marketplace will empower the line of business as well as IT managers to deploy solutions that will drive efficiencies and business performance.”
100 Production-Ready CRM Products

All extensions and applications offered on the SugarExchange marketplace are approved to work in production instances of SugarCRM. Customers can quickly choose the product that is right for them by using the SugarExchange ratings and popularity indicators that provide direct feedback from the Sugar community. SugarExchange customers also benefit from SugarCRM’s commercial open source development method since all products are used and tested by the open source community at SugarForge prior to gaining SugarExchange production approval.

“SugarExchange helps open source developers distribute their SugarCRM products and SugarCRM users to find the best applications for deployment,” said Florian Treml, author of the popular ZuckerDocs and ZuckerReports modules for SugarCRM. “The flow of development and testing in SugarForge into the production-ready environment of SugarExchange ensures quality and reduces risk.”

ZuckerDocs and ZuckerReports, which offer document management and reporting extensions to SugarCRM, are just two of the many extensions available on SugarExchange today. A sampling of other SugarExchange offerings include:

* Lead and contact management extensions from Asertiva, ContactGrabber and CarouselCRM
* eCommerce and Web self-service integrations with OsCommerce and Mambo
* Email response and email management from ZuckerMail and JRabbit
* Integration and migration from Jitterbit and Contact Capture
* Case management and bug tracking from Asertiva
* Forecasting and reporting extensions from JUMP Technologies and JasperReports
* Systems management from rPath and BitRock.

To view a complete list, please visit www.sugarexchange.com. To learn more about SugarExchange offerings, please contact SugarCRM toll free at 1 87-SUGARCRM.
About SugarCRM

SugarCRM is the world’s leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software for companies of all sizes. SugarCRM easily adapts to any business environment by offering a more flexible, cost-effective alternative than proprietary applications. SugarCRM’s open source architecture allows companies to more easily customize and integrate customer-facing business processes in order to build and maintain more profitable relationships. SugarCRM offers several deployment options, including on-demand, on-premise and appliance-based solutions to suit customers’ security, integration and configuration needs. For more information, call (408) 454-6900 or 1 87- SUGARCRM toll free in the US, email contact@sugarcrm.com, or visit http://www.sugarcrm.com.
Media Contacts:
Tara Spalding, SugarCRM
408-355-3858 or tara@sugarcrm.com

Craig Oda, Page One PR for SugarCRM
650-543-4702 or coda@pageonepr.com

Source: SugarCRM

Tags: