Larry Augustin, SugarCRM CEO
Open source, web-based CRM player SugarCRM will add an Android app to its existing line-up of in-browser, iOS and BlackBerry clients, CBR has learned.
SugarCRM CEO Larry Augustin told us the Android application is likely to be launched at the same time as the next version of SugarCRM’s customer relationship management application, Sugar version 6.4. That’s in beta testing now and should be released early next year, according to Augustin.
The version following that, most likely to be called 6.5, will add support for IBM’s DB2 database to its existing Oracle, MySQL, and SQL Server database support. Augustin said there will also be what he called internal system speed-ups – essentially tuning the app to run that bit more smoothly at scale – and also further improvements to the calendaring functionality.
Augustin also explained that unlike salesforce.com, SugarCRM has no interest in becoming a platform player. "We’re not even exclusively a cloud provider, because we have an on-premise option," he said. "We want customers to have the ability to choose any cloud service provider, because they want to choose their own service level, security, reliability, uptime, provisioning, geaographical coverage and so on. We support those cloud services which also means we do not need to build all of our own data centres."
SugarCRM has also been working on better documenting its application programming interface (API). Limited documentation had made it tricky for people to navigate through the API and know what methods are available. In response the company kicked off a project to go through the API from top to bottom, cleaning it up in an effort to make it easier to customise and build add-ons to Sugar.
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In the 6.4 version there will be a refactoring of the database layer, for instance. The firm also sought a way to give customers and developers a means of visualising the API, and it turned to the DocBlox project led by Mike van Riel, who helped the company get DocBlox working to build processes that generate nice looking API documentation for all editions of Sugar.
As an aside, DocBlox’s van Riel recently announced a new version of DocBlox, saying: "After the great news that SugarCRM has started using DocBlox I am happy to announce the immediate availability of DocBlox 0.16.0." Find out more at www.docblox-project.org.
Keep an eye on www.cbronline.com (or bookmark it now) for a forthcoming Q&A with Larry Augustin.
