Deal Radar 2009: SugarCRM

Deal Radar returns to open source with SugarCRM. Founded in 2004 by John Roberts, Clint Oram, and Jacob Taylor, SugarCRM began as an open-source project on Sourceforge, something that the company still maintains. The company, which is headquartered in Cupertino, California, develops CRM software in four editions: Sugar Community Edition, Sugar Express, Sugar Professional, and Sugar Enterprise.

In our previous coverage, an interview with John Roberts, Roberts said that the company has a common source code tree, and the source code is tagged by addition. During the build process it splits out the different editions. But the company provides the source code to everyone but owns the copyright and provides a commercial license which forbids redistribution. The Sugar OpenSource, or the Community Edition, is free.

In April 2009, the company announced the addition of Sugar Express to its list of solutions. It delivers core sales, marketing, and support features, with Sugar Plug-Ins for Microsoft Office and access to SugarCRM Customer Support. It also includes Module Builder to create custom modules and Cloud Connectors that helps integrate third-party data services from companies such as Jigsaw. The new addition has been priced at an annual subscription of $499 for up to five users or $799 for up to ten users per year. The company also slashed the prices of the Sugar Professional to $30 per user per month and Sugar Enterprise to $50 per user per month.

The company’s applications have been downloaded over five million times and serve over 500,000 users in 75 languages. Its on-site and cloud computing services have over 5,000 customers. In November 2009, the company entered into a partnership with Tata Communications to provide its CRM applications to meet the needs of businesses in India. The company also announced partnership with DataSync in October 2009 to deliver an integrated suite of small business applications to small businesses. Datasync’s DataSync Suite™, integrates core business applications including SugarCRM, Quickbooks®, Zimbra® (mail/calendaring) and Drupal® (website management) into a software-as-a-service web portal. In the past year, the company has received accolades from CRM Magazine, InfoWorld, Customer Interaction Solutions and Intelligent Enterprise.

Since our last chat with SugarCRM, a lot has changed. In May 2009, John Roberts resigned as the company’s chief executive officer to pursue other opportunities. Larry M. Augustin, a member of the board, was appointed as interim CEO. In November 2009, the company appointed Augustin as the full-time CEO. He has previously served as CEO of VA Linux (now SourceForge) and Medsphere. The company attributed this nomination to his contribution towards the company. Augustin is said to have expanded the company’s presence in Europe and worked closely with SugarCRM’s value-added resellers there to increase the company’s market presence, among other goals.

The company faces competition from Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Entellium. While its competitors in open source CRM solution providers such as Anteil, openCRM, Compiere, Daffodil, and vTiger. The company has raised $41 million so far: a $2 million Series A from Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 2004; a $5.75 million Series B from Walden Venture Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 2005; a $18.8 million Series C from New Enterprise Associates, Walden Venture Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 2005; and a $14.5 million Series D from New Enterprise Associates, Walden Venture Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 2008.

Suggested Reading:
*Commercial OpenSource: SpringSource CEO Rod Johnson
*Building The Small Business CRM Solution: CircleDog CEO Charlie Crystle
*Salesforce.com’s Incubator: René Bonvanie

This segment is a part in the series : Deal Radar 2009