Superoffice ASA, a developer of customer relationship management software for small and midsize businesses, decided to open its source code to a developer network that can build new applications and modules on top of the software, said Superoffice spokeswoman Tanja Heyde. Developers, who have to pay to join the network, can exchange applications and programs and discuss projects with other developers, she said.Superoffice also plans to introduce a similar program for customers who can then access the source code to build their own applications, she said.

Small and midsize businesses increasingly want to customize their business applications, and some software vendors are making sure they can, mainly through open-source initiatives, vendors at CeBIT said on Saturday.

Smaller businesses are sometimes drawn to open-source products in part because they can often take advantage of development done by larger enterprises, said Olaf Jacobi, CEO of Collax Gmbh. "[Smaller businesses] would like the same software that the enterprise has," he said. Because open-source developers at large enterprises create new applications and then share those applications with the community, smaller companies have the opportunity to use the new applications, he noted.

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Prashanth Rai

Tag(s):SMB, Open+Source