Optaros Inc., an open source software consulting and integration firm, today announced an alliance agreement with SugarCRM, Inc., the premier open source customer relationship management application provider. Optaros will provide a full line of planning, architecture, implementation, integration, customization services and deployment support for the new Enterprise edition of Sugar Suite.

The Sugar Suite empowers organizations to better manage customer interactions both during sales cycles and post-sales to provide superior one-stop customer service. Sugar Suite leverages open source software technologies and is built on Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (LAMP) open source technology. This architecture platform runs in several operating system environments including Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft and Unix, allowing it to be the most scalable, customizable and economical CRM solution available today.

“As more companies are looking for greater choices in business applications, we see a growing need for the open, customization and integration choices that SugarCRM provides with its solution,” says Brian Otis, Optaros´ vice president of sales. “Having an open approach gives clients a long-term approach that won´t lock them into a proprietary, closed system. CRM is a mission-critical application that requires accessing other business systems in the enterprise such as pricing and order status. Companies want software matched to their business needs without the complexity and expense of proprietary systems.”

“SugarCRM is proud to have Optaros as a partner,” says Jeff Campbell, director of alliances at SugarCRM. “With the recent introduction of Sugar Enterprise and its new features that can serve the most demanding situations, we know that partners like Optaros are an important factor in achieving our enterprise vision of addressing the large variety of CRM strategies that our customers possess. Optaros´ business expertise and leadership in bringing open source strategies and business applications to enterprises provide great synergy with SugarCRM. Optaros has both the business expertise and technology depth to offer our customers effective planning, integration and deployment of the Sugar Suite.”

Philippe Grosjean, Optaros worldwide practice lead for CRM, says, “Globally, clients are looking for more customization in CRM applications. Customers have higher expectations from their business partners and want faster, more efficient business interactions; they are looking for all of their personalized information and transactions to be available on one screen with one log-on account. This means providing systems that serve the specific business process in question and that integrate with other enterprise business systems. Deploying generic, non-integrated CRM systems is not worth the investment in today's business environment.”

About SugarCRM SugarCRM (www.sugarcrm.com) provides commercial open source customer relationship management applications for companies of all sizes worldwide. SugarCRM was founded in 2004 by three Silicon Valley CRM professionals with over 20 years of experience spanning marketing, application design and engineering. The company is headquartered in Cupertino, Calif., and can be reached by visiting www.sugarcrm.com.

About Optaros

Optaros, Inc. (www.optaros.com) is a venture capital-funded consulting and systems integration firm that helps large enterprises use open source software to reduce the cost of commercial software and rapidly build high-quality, cost-effective and more flexible business applications. Based in Cambridge, Mass., the firm provides a range of services necessary for enterprises to maximize the benefits of open source software — to replace existing costly proprietary software or to build new business applications. Having launched two of the most successful IT service companies of the last two major shifts in technology, Optaros´ management brings substantial expertise to creating a company that can help clients fully adopt new technology models and platforms.