SugarCRM Doubles Commercial Customer Base to 600

Building Momentum for Commercial Open Source Applications

Cupertino, CA (May 15, 2006) - SugarCRM Inc. announced today that it has doubled its commercial customer base in the last six months, attracting more than 600 paying customers since the first edition of its commercial open source customer relationship (CRM) software was released in September 2004. The achievement demonstrates a rapidly accelerating adoption rate, gives SugarCRM a larger customer base than many proprietary CRM vendors, and marks a new milestone in the acceptance of open source enterprise applications by the business community.

SugarCRM's customers include users of both Sugar Professional for small and mid-sized businesses and Sugar Enterprise for larger organizations, with license size ranging from five to 9,000 seats. Both editions offer advanced features, technical support, and a choice of installed, hosted or appliance-based deployment.

Adoption is being fueled by ongoing upgrades to the SugarCRM platform, a low total cost of ownership compared to proprietary applications, the use of open standards enabling low-cost integration with legacy customer databases, and a straightforward user interface without the complexity that frequently causes traditional CRM implementations to fail.

An additional 500,000 users around the globe have downloaded Sugar Open Source, the core SugarCRM application that is available for free. Over 200 extensions and other enhancements have been contributed by the development community and have been downloaded more than 1 million times through SugarForge.org, the online development forum for Sugar Open Source. Enhancements include translation into 40 languages.

"Our CRM platform continues to be the most successful commercial open source enterprise application in the industry, and it is paving the way for a fundamental shift in the way that business software is developed and sold," said John Roberts, Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of SugarCRM. "Our ability to bring 600 customers on board in less than 18 months clearly shows the market demand for an alternative to the hidden costs, inflexibility, and difficult integration processes associated with proprietary software."

Major Business Benefits

Now in its fourth generation, SugarCRM's Sugar Suite is enabling customers in a wide variety of industries to achieve important information efficiencies that in turn are delivering significant business returns. For example:

• The 3Sixty Group, a manufacturer of industrial products with customers in 50 countries, has centralized CRM activities for five offices through SugarCRM's web-based architecture and streamlined the RFP process through integrations that have enabled RFPs submitted online to be automatically entered into SugarCRM. "Before Sugar, we had a lot of small opportunities fall through the cracks. Now that never happens, partly because we have central control over all of our incoming leads," said Tony Losey, IT/Marketing Manager.
• Prevalent Networks, an information security consulting firm, has replaced a series of separate applications for functions such as contact management and quoting with SugarCRM's integrated CRM application and added critical capabilities such as tracking of maintenance contracts. "There's no question that SugarCRM has helped us close more business, and it has all of the functionality we need at one-quarter the price of other systems," said Jonathan Dambrot, Managing Member.
• InterAct Public Safety Systems, a provider of public safety and homeland security systems and products, has gained a 360-degree view of its customers through ERP and customer service system integrations that automatically push hardware purchases, service histories and other information to the SugarCRM database. "Accessing all of this information from one interface makes it possible to see opportunities we couldn't see before, and that is making a real difference in our business," said Evans Wroten, Chief Information Officer.
  "I've had experience with other CRM products at other companies, and the adoption rates are usually very low. That really kills your ROI," Wroten added. "Our adoption rate exceeds 85%, and I attribute that to Sugar's usability."

About SugarCRM

SugarCRM is the world's leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software for companies of all sizes. SugarCRM's Sugar Suite 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.