CUPERTINO, Calif. – SugarCRM, the world’s leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, today announced that CEO Larry Augustin will participate in two panel discussions at this year’s Open Source Convention (OSCON) in San Jose. Augustin’s sessions will focus on what companies need to consider when implementing and enforcing open source licensing and trademarks.

Session Details:

Choosing a License: Ensuring that Your Intellectual Property Strategy Matches Your Goals

Topic: This presentation will discuss how companies make decisions about which licenses to use for an open source project or an open source company.

Participants: Larry Augustin and Vicky Lee, partner, DLA Piper

Date and time: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 at 10:00 a.m. PT

Location: Room Willow Glen 1, San Jose Marriott

What’s in a Name: Can Trademarks be Helpful to Free Software Projects?

Topic: This panel will discuss whether it is useful to register a trademark and, if so, how to permit its use by others. The panel will also evaluate various policies and enforcement strategies from corporate and non-profit perspectives.

Participants: Larry Augustin will be joined by Karen Sandler, attorney, Software Freedom Law Center; Simon Phipps, chief of open source solutions, Sun Microsystems; Gervase Markham, project coordinator for the Mozilla Foundation and Chris Messina, board member of the OpenID Foundation

Date and time: Friday, July 24 at 10:45 a.m. PT

Location: Meeting room B3, San Jose Convention Center

Now in its eleventh year, OSCON will focus on the biggest issue in open source today—the rapid acceleration of new technological innovations, and how the industry will define, maintain and extend the definition of open source through the next ten years. Over the course of four days, keynotes from Google, Microsoft, Infotrope, Intel, Mozilla, Canonical Ltd. and The Linux Foundation will preview the future of open source by revealing how it is already being used by the industry’s top enterprises and vendors to push the envelope on innovation while coming in under budget.

For more information about OSCON 2009, visit: http://en.oreilly.com/oscon2009. Additionally, to hear more from Larry Augustin on the state of open source and other related topics, please visit his blog at: http://lmaugustin.typepad.com/.

About SugarCRM

SugarCRM is the world’s leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software for companies of all sizes. Sugar easily adapts to any business environment by offering a more flexible, cost-effective alternative than proprietary applications. SugarCRM’s open source architecture allows companies to more easily customize and integrate customer-facing business processes in order to build and maintain more profitable relationships. SugarCRM offers several deployment options, including on-demand, on-premise and appliance-based solutions to suit customers’ security, integration and configuration needs. For more information, call (408) 454-6900 or 1 87 SUGARCRM toll free in the US, email contact@sugarcrm.com, or visit http://www.sugarcrm.com.

CUPERTINO, Calif. – SugarCRM Inc., the world’s leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, today announced that Sugar Professional has been recognized as the “Best Open Source Solution” by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) 2009 CODiE Awards. SugarCRM provides a robust, Web-based human interaction management platform for companies to manage the entire customer relationship.

For over five years, SugarCRM’s commercial open source model has nurtured one of the fastest-growing CRM products in history. Currently, over 60,000 businesses and 550,000 users around the world rely on SugarCRM to manage customers. Concurrently, SugarCRM has invested heavily in an on-demand architecture that preserves the flexibility and choice that customers expect from open source solutions.

“Now in its 24th year, the CODiE Awards continue to recognize those companies providing the best new technology products and services across a broad array of industries,” noted SIIA President Ken Wasch. “In addition, its winners are a prolific testament to the power of technology to deliver innovative solutions to businesses and consumers. SIIA warmly congratulates all of the winners and nominees of the CODiE Awards, whose innovation is essential for continuing America’s leadership in the global knowledge economy,” Wasch continued.

“We are honored to have won such a prestigious award,” said Chris Harrick, vice president of corporate and product marketing at SugarCRM. “This award represents our continued dedication to providing the most innovative solution in the market today. The CODiE Awards honor the best and brightest in the industry, and we are extremely proud to be among the 2009 winners.”

Additional accolades that SugarCRM has achieved in 2009, include:
ISM Top 15 SMB CRM Award—SugarCRM 5.2 was selected as one of the 2009 Top 15 CRM software solutions in the SMB category, http://www.ismguide.com/pressDetail.php?id_pag=31.
Customer Interaction Solutions CRM Excellence Award—SugarCRM was announced a winner for the SugarCRM Suite Solution consisting of Community Edition, Sugar Professional and Sugar Enterprise, http://callcenterinfo.tmcnet.com/Analysis/articles/53312-2009-crm-excellence-awards-winners-announced-customer-interaction.htm.
Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service—SugarCRM’s customer, Geeks on the Way was named a winner in the “CRM Implementation & User Adoption Program of the Year” category, http://www.stevieawards.com/pubs/sales/awards/426_2281_19531.cfm.
Small Business Computing Excellence in Technology Awards—SugarCRM was named a runner-up in the category of “Sales/Customer Management” to ACT by Sage 2009 and Microsoft Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager, http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/biztools/article.php/10730_3798906_2.
Intelligent Enterprise 2009 Editor’s Choice Awards—SugarCRM was selected a company to watch in the category of “Enterprise Applications,” http://www.intelligententerprise.com/channels/enterprise_applications/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212800112&pgno=5.

About SugarCRM

SugarCRM is the world’s leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software. Founded as an open source project in 2004, SugarCRM applications have been downloaded over five million times and currently serve over 500,000 users in 75 languages. Over 5,000 customers have chosen SugarCRM’s On-Site and Cloud Computing services over lock-in based, proprietary alternatives. In the last year, SugarCRM has been recognized for its customer success and product innovation by CRM Magazine, InfoWorld, Customer Interaction Solutions and Intelligent Enterprise.

For more information, call (408) 454-6900 or 1 87 SUGARCRM toll-free in the US, email contact@sugarcrm.com, or visit http://www.sugarcrm.com.

CUPERTINO, Calif. – SugarCRM, the world’s leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, announced the GetSocial Twitter™ Module has been named the “Project-of-the-Month” for SugarForge.org. The GetSocial Twitter module allows companies to seamlessly integrate social marketing to Twitter from within SugarCRM. This new capability provides users with tools to improve customer service, expand marketing programs and maintain management oversight.

Each month, SugarCRM highlights a Project-of-the-Month winner on SugarForge.org, the company’s community website. Projects-of-the-Month are selected on the quality of a project’s code, its overall activity and its general usefulness as an extension to SugarCRM.

The GetSocial Twitter module assists companies leveraging the SugarCRM customer relationship platform by providing easily integrated, simple-to-use Twitter features for every department. Internal employees can now utilize Twitter through an authorized channel and client that provides an audit trail and reporting for managers.

“The explosion of Twitter has left many companies searching for answers on how to adapt to the new service in order to provide better customer support, enhanced marketing efforts and maintain management oversight,” said Josh Sweeney, managing partner of ALT-Invest. “In building GetSocial Twitter, we are giving back to the Sugar community by providing an inexpensive, robust open source enhancement for marketing and sales teams to utilize Twitter for increased productivity and business.”

Sales teams can utilize GetSocial Twitter to receive constant updates on client status in order to connect on a deeper level. Support teams can access all product comments to provide more efficient customer support, and marketing can use the built-in Twitter search functionality to gain insight into what customers are saying about their brand. Due to the tremendous support for GetSocial Twitter, ALT-Invest has already released a GetSocial Twitter Pro application and is working on developing a configurable dynamic panels module similar to the already existing Dynamic Account Panels module.

“The GetSocial Twitter module provides an essential open source tool to bridge the gap between management, sales, marketing and the customer,” said Clint Oram, co-founder and vice president of product management at SugarCRM.

To view additional information on the GetSocial: Twitter module project please visit: http://www.sugarforge.org/content/project-of-the-month.

About GetSocial Twitter

The GetSocial Twitter module allows companies who utilize social marketing to Twitter from within SugarCRM. For more information, please visit http://alt-invest.net.

About SugarCRM

SugarCRM is the world’s leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software. Founded as an open source project in 2004, SugarCRM applications have been downloaded over five million times and currently serve over 500,000 users in 75 languages. Over 4,000 customers have chosen SugarCRM’s On-Site and Cloud Computing services over lock-in based, proprietary alternatives. In the last year, SugarCRM has been recognized for its customer success and product innovation by CRM Magazine, InfoWorld, Customer Interaction Solutions and Intelligent Enterprise.

For more information, call (408) 454-6900 or 1 87 SUGARCRM tollfree in the US, email contact@sugarcrm.com, or visit http://www.sugarcrm.com.