13 Sept 2004: Announcing Sugar Sales Professional

Open Source Applications Leader SugarCRM Debuts Sugar Sales Professional

The #1 Commercial Open Source CRM Vendor Now Offers Production and Technical Support; Edition Also Incorporates Sugar Sales 1.5 With Outlook Email Plug-In, End-User Data Import Tools

CUPERTINO, CA — (Monday, September 13, 2004) — SugarCRM Inc., developer of Sugar Sales, the world’s fastest growing commercial open source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application built on pure LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) environments, announced it is ready to help companies reach the full potential of Sugar Sales via the release of Sugar Sales Professional. Incorporating Sugar Sales 1.5, a new distribution that also debuted last Thursday, Sugar Sales Professional provides the software optimization, patch/fix support, and technical assistance required for a mission-critical, enterprise-class software platform, at a fraction of the price of proprietary, closed source CRM products.

Sugar Sales, in the six short months since its release, has surged to the top of the commercial open source CRM software category. Its current 25,000-plus downloads rival the customer base of some of the most popular proprietary products in the CRM industry, with hundreds more downloads being added each day. SugarCRM, initiators of Sugar Sales, has also become one of the first commercial open source application startups to receive venture capital, after Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a leading VC firm, provided $2 million in Series A funding last month.

“Sugar Sales Professional is the first and only product that helps companies realize the ultimate benefits of Sugar Sales,” said John Roberts, CEO of SugarCRM, Inc. “Now customers can receive automatic distributions and upgrades that are tested and certified for specific servers, as well as patches and fixes the minute they become available. Professional also provides installation and technical support, trouble ticketing, premium knowledge base access, and quarterly Sugar Sales product updates. This is the Sugar Sales that businesses have been waiting for.”

Sugar Sales 1.5 Adds Key Features
Sugar Sales 1.5, debuting with Professional Edition, brings Sugar Sales to a new level of power and utility. In addition to improved database support and a full complement of expanded charting and reporting capabilities, version 1.5 now offers a data import tool that lets end-users easily import data from most proprietary CRM and contact management products including Outlook, salesforce.com, ACT!, SalesLogix, and Microsoft CRM.

“Prospective customers are delighted with the reliability, scalability, security and economic benefits of Sugar Sales,” notes Roberts. “One of the most common questions asked next is ‘How can I easily migrate my current CRM data?’ Version 1.5 gives them that capability!”

Also included in SugarCRM’s distribution of Sugar Sales 1.5 is an exclusive, Microsoft Outlook Email Plug-in that allows Windows-based Outlook users to capture customer emails in Sugar Sales with a single click. With this unique capability, sales professionals can associate correspondence to the appropriate contact, account, case or opportunity for sales activity tracking.
Sugar Sales 1.5 users can choose from any of eleven different language packs (English, Japanese, Chinese/Traditional, Chinese/Simplified, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Swiss German, Italian, French, and Swedish) to meet their local or multi-national deployment requirements.

“Prevalent Networks has been running Sugar Sales successfully for several months. In that time Sugar CRM has helped us manage a multi-million dollar pipeline, improve internal communication, and increase customer satisfaction,” notes Jonathan Dambrot, Partner, Prevalent Networks. “We are excited about the introduction of Sugar Sales 1.5 Professional because of the added support and functionality. We believe these are being added to an already great product currently used by Prevalent Networks to grow its business.”

Limited $149 Introductory Offer
For a fee of $239 per user per year, Sugar Sales Professional subscribers receive a host of value-added services including tested, certified, and optimized downloadable versions of Sugar Sales on a quarterly basis; installation assistance; trouble ticketing; global weekday phone/email-based technical support (9AM-5PM Pacific time); and full production support including patch and fix distributions.

However, to make Sugar Sales Professional even more valuable, SugarCRM is currently offering a special introductory price for subscribers of just $149 per user for the first year. In addition to the subscriber services described above, the $149 intro price includes the commercial license Microsoft Outlook Email Plug-in.

To demo, download or purchase Sugar Sales Professional, call the SugarCRM sales line at (408) 873-9872 or visit www.sugarcrm.com.

About SugarCRM:
SugarCRM provides commercial open source customer relationship management applications for companies of all sizes worldwide. SugarCRM was founded in 2004 by three Silicon Valley CRM professionals with over twenty years of experience spanning marketing, application design and engineering. The company is headquartered in Cupertino, California and can be reached by email at contact@sugarcrm.com, or visit the website www.sugarcrm.com.