Project management with Sugar on top

Linux-based specialist CRM vendor SugarCRM launched into the project-planning market this week with their new project-management application.

Touted within the release is a feature known as “Sugar Projects,” which promises a 360-degree view of a project along with shared files, notes and benchmarks, while allowing collaboration between internet users and customers.

The announcement was couched in the shadow of the opening of Sugar Europe. The office located in verdant Dublin, Ireland, was announced earlier this month. Company figures show that about one-quarter of SugarCRM’s commercial customers are located in Europe and more than 30 percent of Sugar Open Source downloads take place in Europe.

SugarCRM PR once again took the opportunity to note its low overhead in making such product innovation possible: Chairman/chief executive John Roberts states "the extreme sales and marketing of the other CRM vendors, [so] R&D is a very large proportion of our budget.”

And in the gauntlet-throwing department, Roberts kicked in: "We are doing to Salesforce what Salesforce did to Siebel a couple of years ago.”

As for prices on the SugarCRM product, no serious details have been released yet.