Company Celebrates the Fifth Birthday of the Founding of SugarForge, SugarCRM’s Open Source Development Community at SugarCon

SugarCon 2010 — SAN FRANCISCO–SugarCRM, the world’s leading provider of open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, today announced the beta release of Sugar 6, a landmark release for SugarCRM’s flagship products. Sugar 6 introduces a new user interface that places a premium on speed, simplicity, and interoperability with other web applications and mobile devices. The company also announced it has made the primary source code repository for Sugar Community Edition publicly accessible as it celebrates the fifth birthday of SugarForge, the world’s largest open source CRM community. SugarCRM unveiled Sugar 6 at SugarCon, the company’s user and developer conference being held at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco.

“Over the last 10 years, technology innovation has moved ahead at an amazing clip while the design and usability of CRM applications has stagnated. Until now,” said Larry Augustin, CEO of SugarCRM. “Sugar 6 delivers a look, feel and user experience that consumers of popular social networking and other collaboration tools will appreciate.”

Speed – Fast Setup, Faster Performance

Sugar 6 is designed for speed. Upon entering the application, users are initially welcomed with a revamped guided User Setup wizard. When setup is complete, users will find a CRM application designed for speed and simplicity. The Sugar Shortcut Bar is a persistent toolbar throughout the application that allows users to perform common tasks in one click, including creating an account, contact, sales opportunity, document, note, task or logging a meeting or call. Usability tests show that Sugar 6 requires 20 percent fewer clicks to navigate than in previous versions.

Included in the Shortcut Bar, users will also see a context-aware Global Search field which filters search results based on the module in use (e.g., Contacts, Opportunities and Accounts) and produces results without leaving the page.

“We love it. Additions like Global Search and the Shortcut Bar are the kinds of productivity enhancements our users have been asking for in the system. And Sugar has done an incredible job creating the most modern look and feel for a CRM system, while also significantly increasing usability,” said Chad Hutchins, business development web specialist at Milsoft Utility Solutions, a leading provider of smart grid technology solutions.

Simplicity – Clean, Bold User Interface that is simple to learn and navigate

Sugar 6 delivers a clean, bold look with new buttons and icons that allow users to perform tasks more easily while increasing the information density of each screen. Simplified default views, inline filtering and one-click actions conform to the multitasking environment common to busy sales people. For example, users can use the Shortcut Bar to quickly log an incoming call or assign a task without ever leaving the existing screen.

In each view, users will see module menus that show where the user is in the application as well as providing information about previously viewed pages, filtered results based on user permissions, and convenient tab naming that allows users to more easily navigate Sugar across multiple browser tabs.

“I’m a veteran CRM user, and I was blown away by Sugar’s new approach in Sugar 6,” said Martin Umed, regional sales manager at Control Technology Corporation, a leading provider of programmable automation controllers based in Hopkington, MA. “They obviously focused on the single biggest challenge in adopting/using a CRM package, the user experience – and they read the room perfectly. Sugar 6 amounts to a towering home run – the new interface, with its new efficiency and speed, blurs the distinction between a client and browser applications, and will have an immediate impact on your bottom line sales productivity.”

Accessibility – Visually Appealing on Mobile, Embracing the Cloud

In addition to the new user interface and simple set-up and navigations, Sugar 6 also includes native application support for leading Smartphone operating systems, including the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry Smartphones. SugarCRM is also one of the first to market with a native application for the Apple iPad.

Sugar 6 offers SugarCRM’s popular Cloud Connectors to third-party data service providers such as JigSaw, Hoover’s, and LinkedIn by default, allowing users to obtain the most up-to-date account and lead information directly within SugarCRM. In addition Sugar Plug-Ins for Microsoft Outlook, Word and Excel are built into the application, allowing users to instantly access and integrate the popular productivity programs from within SugarCRM.

Celebrating SugarForge

SugarCRM also announced that is has made the primary source code repository for Sugar Community Edition publicly accessible at SugarForge, SugarCRM’s open source development community. Since 2005, SugarForge has grown from a single project and three developers to over 22,000 developers, 800 projects and close to eight million downloads of SugarCRM and its related components.

Sugar 6 is available for review and testing at http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/OnlinePreview.

About SugarCRM

SugarCRM is the world’s leading provider of open source customer relationship management (CRM) software. Over 6,000 customers and more than half a million users rely on SugarCRM to execute marketing programs, grow sales, retain customers and create custom business applications. Leading publications such as CRM Magazine, InfoWorld and eWeek praise SugarCRM for its ease-of-use, flexibility and open design. SugarCRM runs on the leading cloud computing platforms, including Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, Sugar On-Demand and Private Clouds, offering customers unparalleled choice and control of their data and deployments.

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.