Company wide software projects, such as setting up enterprise resource planning (ERP) or customer relationship management (CRM) systems, tend to be extraordinarily expensive compared to the functionality they offer. Besides the initial software purchase, companies often have to spend large sums for consulting services by software specialists required to integrate the software package with the company’s IT infrastructure. The alternative of writing the software from scratch has the obvious drawback of requiring a substantial software development effort.

The solution to this dilemma is to develop such software as Open Source projects.

This is exactly the vision of SugarCRM. SugarCRM has been developing a customer relationship management software package, also called SugarCRM, with the help of interested parties in the Open Source community. The Open Source version of the system, called Sugar Open Source, is a production-ready fully supported CRM system, and can be downloaded for free. Since the software is Open Source, companies can customize or extend the system as needed with relatively little cost. Alternatively, SugarCRM provides advanced features and technical support for a fee.

The software can be downloaded here.