However, open Source in the sense of a true commercially viable market force is a trend that is strongly (re-)gaining the public's attention. The days are over, when open source software was confined to the infrastructural layer in a company’s IT backbone. The open source CRM applications market has rapidly matured over the last couple of years.

Customer Relationship Management is undergoing a strong re-orientation towards open source, thanks to a number of aspects.

• The functionalities of CRM have matured during a decade of commercial evolution. CRM software has become a commodity where stealing the show with a smart set of functions is getting increasingly difficult.
• Part of this evolution has undeniably led to a wide CRM awareness within the industry. The technology push of the past has morphed into a highly competitive and well-educated market requiring true value for money.
• Strong open source product offerings are reaching the market today, combining the power of the open source community approach with business savvy product companies knowing how to position these products as viable solutions for both small to medium businesses (SMB) and enterprise customers.

Last but not least, many customers are concerned with the consolidation going on among the traditional proprietary CRM product vendors. With e.g. Siebel and PeopleSoft being acquired by Oracle, there is substantial uncertainty whether and how the individual product lines will be supported in the future as well as concerns with having to perform major system migration efforts to comply with future product lines.