SugarCRM is a software company from the future. These guys get it right, and if you're in the market for a CRM solution, these guys beat everyone (Salesforce included). Here's why:

• You get the software on your servers, none of this "let us host it for you" (translation: let us keep your most valuable information and use it to hijack your company from you) crap that other CRM companies use.
• You get the source code. It's all modular, object-oriented, and well abstracted, so it's easy to build upon, extend, and customize. For CRM, this is a must, as almost by definition CRM needs to integrate with other applications in a way that is often extremely unique to your company.

It runs on LAMP (although there is a version of it that can rely on an Oracle database), and has a growing community of developers and many extensions/plugins to help you in the customization process.

From a business model perspective, note the differerence in the value chain; other companies that offer hosted solutions with a more closed architecture are charging for technology, while Sugar seems to be positioning itself to charge less for technology and more for service.

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