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SugarCRM, developer of Sugar Sales commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) application built on pure LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) environments, has the release of Sugar Sales Professional.
Incorporating Sugar Sales 1.5, a new distribution that also debuted last Thursday, Sugar Sales Professional provides the software optimization, patch/fix support, and technical assistance required for a mission-critical, enterprise-class software platform.
Sugar Sales, which was released six months ago, has seen 25,000-plus downloads so far.
"Sugar Sales Professional is the first and only product that helps companies realize the ultimate benefits of Sugar Sales," said John Roberts, CEO of SugarCRM.
New Features
He explained: "Now customers can receive automatic distributions and upgrades that are tested and certified for specific servers, as well as patches and fixes the minute they become available. Professional also provides installation and technical support, trouble ticketing, premium knowledge base access, and quarterly Sugar Sales product updates."
Sugar Sales 1.5, debuting with Professional Edition, brings Sugar Sales to a new level of power and utility. In addition to improved database support and a full complement of expanded charting and reporting capabilities, version 1.5 offers a data import tool that lets end-users easily import data from most proprietary CRM and contact management products including Outlook, salesforce.com, ACT!, SalesLogix and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) CRM.
Also included in SugarCRM's distribution of Sugar Sales 1.5 is an exclusive, Microsoft Outlook e-mail plug-in that allows Windows-based Outlook users to capture customer e-mails in Sugar Sales with a single click. With this capability, sales professionals can associate correspondence to the appropriate contact, account, case or opportunity for sales 
activity tracking.
Sugar Sales 1.5 users can choose from any of 11 different language packs (English, Japanese, Chinese/Traditional, Chinese/Simplified, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Swiss German, Italian, French, and Swedish) to meet their local or multinational deployment requirements.
Annual Fee
For a fee of $239 per user per year, Sugar Sales Professional subscribers receive a host of value-added services including tested, certified and optimized downloadable versions of Sugar Sales on a quarterly basis; installation assistance; trouble ticketing; global weekday phone/e-mail-based technical support; and full production support including patch and fix distributions.
SugarCRM, which was founded earlier this year, provides commercial open source customer relationship management applications for companies of all sizes worldwide.
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