Today, SugarCRM was part of an announcement with DataSync to now offer SMBs an integrated suite of small business applications, delivering Sugar Professional, Quickbooks, Zimbra and Drupal via a cloud-based Web portal.
Here you have the ability for a small biz to get an integrated suite for email management, contact, accounting, Website management and sales, marketing and customer support via a cloud-based service that also adds the flexibility of the open source model if need be. In short, enterprise-grade functionality and integration at a fraction of the cost, and all thanks to the concept of open source and proprietary software coming together into a single platform via the cloud.
I’m not a big fan of tooting our own horn, but this is a perfect example of how open source is helping to lower the TCO of software for businesses. In addition, I also love the fact that it’s tailored for SMBs out-of-the-box. For years I’ve heard a lot from industry pundits that open source isn’t for smaller companies with little to no IT support. I see the concept of cloud computing and open source helping to buck that belief.
