Sugar sees sweetness in ‘06

With the recent announcement of the impending release of their revamped Sugar Network, SugarCRM has been making waves in the industry. How much more powerful can the number one CRM open source technology vendor get? Well, as Sugar Online co-founder / general manager Clint Oram said on Crmbuyer.com, “2006 will be an extremely exciting year as we look to double and triple our customers.” That’s right: Triple.

This from a company which scored its first commercial client about eighteen months ago, in an industry which barely existed two years ago and certainly not at all competitive in the corporate arena. Of course, Oram has some room in which to speak: The one client of 2004 has become four hundred today, and the SugarCRM website sees about 200,000 downloads monthly. Oram cites the 4,000 developers signed on at the company’s development community as evidence that the influence of sugar is growing.