It is clear that open source software is providing true alternatives for many CRM opportunities, next to the commercial or custom built solutions.

• Open source software is much more accessible. While online demos of proprietary software might give you a first impression of the product, it is normally difficult to get access to evaluation versions. Downloading and installing open source software involves a minimum of bureaucracy and provides real insights into the products.
• Open source software is capturing the essence of what the market is looking for, rather than attempting to provide an overkill of functionality that quickly becomes unmanageable.
• Open source software brings full flexibility to customize it to do what is needed. There are no limits to what you can change, no license infringements, no contractual obligations and consequences.
• Open source does not require you to enter a commercial liaison with the vendor of your software. This avoids the initial overhead of defining that liaison and the obligations associated with that, in particular the annual license maintenance costs and having to follow the vendor's upgrade path to not fall outside the support requirements.
• The necessary technology skills needed to maintain or extend your open source software is no longer in the exclusive possession of an elite group of product experts. This fact enables your own organization to be in the position to quickly respond to any support matters rather than having to recruit or maintain expertise.

Not every CRM situation is an open source opportunity. But with the rapidly maturing product landscape, and the possibility to assemble solutions to fit your exact needs, more and more companies start realizing the potential of open source in a CRM context. We strongly believe that an open source option should always be part of the evaluation process when assessing a new CRM project, or when looking to extend an existing CRM solution.

This whitepaper presented an overview of the position of CRM applications in relation to generally heard requirements. The two major streams of CRM solutions discussed in this whitepaper are elaborated in more detail in separate whitepapers.

• "An Insider to Key Open Source CRM Products" gives a more in-depth understanding of the core CRM solutions that were introduced in this whitepaper, also addressing other similar products and emerging projects and setting the context to compare these with known commercial software.
• "Building Enterprise-Ready Open Source CRM" expands on the assembly of CRM functionality that completes a base CRM installation, exploring a bit more in-depth the products that are relevant in that context.

If you have questions or comments regarding CRM in your organization, or would like to know more about our CRM delivery methodology then please do not hesitate to contact us:
http://www.optaros.com/.