Dana - you make some interesting points - but mainly around the difficulty of deploying a production instance of CRM. Yes, the nature of open source application software and the vendors providing it is inherently different than, say, an OS. There is very little difference between a government's use of Linux and a manufacturing firm's. However, in CRM one manufacturer will use the system far differently than another MFR. This unique difference means that companies need more support and customization guidance to be successful (as you mention). So, while open source solutions may prove more cost effective and flexible, to be successful companies must understand that they will need to pay for support and assistance - that is why SugarCRM has been successful providing open source solutions via a subscription model, sold through the channel. Open source enables companies to gain a competitive advantage with their CRM initiatives - it does not reduce costs towards zero necessarily.
As to the issue of supporting the new UI - I don't see this as an issue at all. For the most part, SugarCRM has controlled a lot of the development of its Professional and Enterprise editions: community "check-ins" or contributions to code is very minimal - instead SugarCRM has enabled people to create extensions and modules and make them available at www.sugarforge.org. Again, the benefit here is that for the Community Edition user base - they get a great application and a huge repository of tools/extensions (such as language packs, email integration tools, etc.) in addition to community-based support. For paying subscribers - they are assured of a well maintained, pristine code base and an enterprise-class software offering.
We will continue to fully support Community Edition development as we have in the past - and the UI is only one of a number of features that act as a business driver for those installing Community Edition to "Go Pro" as we call it. There will be no loss of resources aimed at Community Edition, nor any loss of momentum for the continued development for the new UI - as that is primarily done in-house. In fact, we are already nearing completion of some great new features and user experience enhancements slated for release in the fall.
Ultimately, this is a non-issue and our community is excited about the new features in 6.0 just as much as our paying customers are excited about the UI enhancements.
Discussion on:
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