Provident CRM Ltd, the implementation partner for SugarCRM in Ireland, has announced the official release of Sugar Express a low-cost, on-demand CRM offering for individuals and small businesses.

For the last five years, SugarCRM's commercial open source model has nurtured one of the fastest-growing CRM products in history. Since 2005, SugarCRM has invested heavily in its on-demand architecture to deliver SugarCRM products as a service while preserving the principles of flexibility and choice that customers expect from providers of open source solutions. 

Currently, over 60,000 businesses and 550,000 users around the world rely on SugarCRM to manage customers, and Sugar Express answers the demand of some of those users for an affordable solution that is managed and supported by SugarCRM's global on-demand computing platform, the Sugar Open Cloud.

The key elements of the Sugar Open Cloud include template-based architecture for automated provisioning, delivery, maintenance for SugarCRM instances around the world; Support for web services such as REST for the exchange and consumption of application and data services from around the Web; Open source programs, languages and standards to ensure portability, low-cost and no vendor lock-in; and the utilisation of world-class data centers to ensure security, redundancy and dynamic allocation of resources.

Sugar Express provides core sales, marketing, and support features, Sugar Plug-Ins for Microsoft Office, and access to the SugarCRM Customer Support. Platform functionality includes Module Builder to create custom modules and applications and Cloud Connectors to integrate third-party data service from companies such as Hoover's and Jigsaw directly into SugarCRM. 

SugarCRM's CEO John Roberts (pictured) who presented a session at the Irish Web Technologies Conference in 2008, the forerunner of the Irish Software Show, epicenter 2009, founded the company in 2004.

He said, "For all of its promise, the cloud computing movement is in danger of becoming yet another mousetrap to lock-in customers to proprietary vendors. Sugar Express and the Sugar Open Cloud marry the seamless maintenance and deployment of on-demand computing with the values of open source: openness, portability and flexibility." 

The introduction of the Sugar Open Cloud allows SugarCRM to offer an industry-first: a unified pricing and deployment plan for its three commercial products -Express, Professional and Enterprise. Upon purchase, customers acquire access to their Sugar products on-demand and receive a download key to bring their products in house or in another cloud environment. This new approach provides unrivalled portability and flexibility when compared to other CRM providers.

Provident CRM have landed some high profile clients including the Quinn Group and the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK. Managing Director Gary Cullen said, "Having successfully launched Europe's first Sugar On-Demand Cloud infrastructure in association with Hosting 365 we are well positioned to help any SugarCRM user get the most out of their investment in SugarCRM."

The deal between Provident CRM, SugarCRM and Hosting 365 was announced in June 2008 at the Irish Open Source Technology Conference where SugarCRM co-founder Clint Oram presented a session entitled Yesterday's (See Video Announcement)

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