I am working with SugarCRM now for about 8 years. I love the platform and think they folks at Sugar did a great job initially. But one thing they never got right was the model of extendability. While other providers make a great asset out of their app stores and generate nice revenue streams on upsell and additonal componentes sugar is the lame duck here.
SugarCRM is great but lacks in many areas quite some functionality. As harsh as this sounds this is not an issue. In fact the same applies to almost any other CRM solution out there. The power comes with the eco system providing innovative solutions that add to the core product. This is not a lack of a product but a core strength. It also boardens the footprint and brings more lively product to the user. This is good for the customer, the partner and the provider as well.
If you look at the module loader as it is right now and the offers that Sugar is putting themselves up or partners like SugarOutfitters do this is a mere first step. We have been amongst the first ones to publish and bring addons to SugarOutfitters and at least I have to say Jason and the team had and has the right ideas of bringing supply and demand together matching it on their platform.
Yet still as a provider there you are bound to the not really functioning module loader. And let’s be honest downloading a file from one platform and uploading it to another one is thing that should remind anybody of the good old times we had some 10 years ago. At least with the internet we are beyond floppy disks but the gaps is not that wide. As I am typing this on my wordpress blog take a look at platforms like wordpress where it is completely logical that the plugin manager is integrated, you do not need to load any file but can choose the plugins you want from within the app.
With Jason and the team from SugarOutfitters we will over the next months also change how this will be done in SpiceCRM and try to make it backwards compatible with SugarCRM as well. How far we will get with the first attempt we will see, but the clear strategy is to make SpiceCRM an extensible platform. Also to keep plugins compatible with SugarCRM and also potentially SuiteCRM as another contender out there.
It is about time somebody starts this. And we are exicted that SugarOutfitters and the team is joining our efforts to make this happen.