Sugar Network, a bundle of software, online training, and support for users of the open-source version of its CRM (customer relationship management) software, represents the first time the company is providing full support to its open-source users, according to John Roberts, chief executive officer of SugarCRM. Previously, the firm's open-source support was incident-based, he said in a recent phone interview. The company made the announcement at the LinuxWorld conference in Boston.

Sugar Network includes plug-ins for Microsoft's Outlook and Word, the messaging and word processing applications in the desktop Office suite. SugarCRM is selling Sugar Network as an annual subscription for $99 per user.

In February, SugarCRM and Microsoft announced plans to improve interoperability between Microsoft's Windows Server and SugarCRM's software through a technical collaboration project. As part of that deal, SugarCRM is due to release version 4.5 of its CRM software under the Microsoft Community License. The license is part of Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative, a program for sharing source code with customers, partners and governments.

Sugar 4.5 is in "middevelopment right now," and should appear in June with support for Microsoft's SQL Server database according to Roberts.

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Prashanth Rai