With all the hype going towards SugarCRM and its Open Source software platform, the next best option out there is vtiger CRM.

In 2008, we’ll see these two companies battle it out.

vtiger CRM is an enterprise-ready Open Source CRM software mainly for small and medium businesses. vtiger CRM is built over proven, fast, and reliable LAMP/WAMP (Linux/Windows, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) technologies and other open source projects.

vtiger CRM leverages the benefits of Open Source software and adds more value to the end-users by providing many enterprise features, such as Sales force Automation, customer support & service, marketing automation, inventory management, multiple database support, security management, product customization, calendaring, E-mail integration, add-ons, and others.

vtiger CRM software installation is very simple as all the necessary software, such as Apache, MySQL, and PHP are integrated and executables are made available both for Windows and Linux (RedHat, Debian, SuSe, Fedora, and Mandrake) operating systems in SourceForge.net. You need not concern too much about setting up database, Web server, and other software.

vtiger CRM also provides, enterprise grade business productivity enhancement add-ons, Customer Portal , Outlook Plug-in for Microsoft Outlook users, Office Plug-in for Microsoft Word users, and Thunderbird Extension for Thunderbird mail users. All these add-ons are part of the vtiger CRM Open Source project in SourceForge.net

I think it’s time to get a couple of Linux Virtual Servers and test these two Enterprise-ready Open Source CRM softwares.