SugarCRM 6 Beta adds new user interface

The SugarCRM developers have announced the release of a first beta for version 6.0 of their open source customer relationship manager. In Sugar 6, the developers focused on creating a completely re-designed user interface with new buttons and icons. Larry Augustin, CEO of SugarCRM, said that, “Sugar 6 delivers a look, feel and user experience that consumers of popular social networking and other collaboration tools will appreciate.”

Additionally, the Sugar 6 release is aimed at making common tasks faster and easier, thanks in part to the persistent Sugar Shortcut Bar which is now accessible throughout the application. According to SugarCRM's own usability tests, version 6 requires 20 per cent fewer clicks to navigate than in previous versions. Other improvements include faster performance and native application support for several smartphone operating systems, including Apple's iPhone OS, Android and BlackBerry.

The company also announced that it's celebrating the fifth anniversary of its SugarForge source code repository. To date, SugarCRM and its related components have been downloaded nearly eight million times and SugarForge has now grown to over 22,000 developers and 800 projects.

More details about the release can be found in the company's official press release. SugarCRm 6.0.0 beta is available as an online preview and the source for the community edition is available to download from SugarForge. The latest stable release of SugarCRM is version 5.5.1 from the 22nd of March.

Update: SugarCRM has announced that the license for open source license for version 6 of the Sugar Community Edition has changed from the GPLv3 to version 3 of the GNU Affero General Public License. In a post on the Sugar Developer Blog the developers explain their reasons for the change.

An earlier edition of this story contained the incorrect license information. The H apologises for the error.

See also:

• SugarCRM launches new partner programme, a report from The H.
• SugarCRM 5.5 now generally available, a report from The H.

(crve)