Open source customer relationship management software developer, SugarCRM, has announced the release of a new customer relationship management (CRM) product, Sugar Sales Professional.

The new software is said by Sugar to be designed to provide the software optimisation, patch/fix support and technical assistance required for a mission-critical, enterprise-class software platform at a fraction of the price of proprietary, closed source products.

Sugar Sales Professional is said, by the company, to have an improved database support and a full complement of expanded charting and reporting capabilities, as well as a data import tool that lets end-users import data from most proprietary CRM and contact management products, including Outlook, salesforce.com, ACT!, SalesLogix, and Microsoft CRM.

This is the Sugar Sales that businesses have been waiting for, thinks John Roberts, the CEO of SugarCRM. 

'Now customers can receive automatic distributions and upgrades that are tested and certified for specific servers, as well as patches and fixes the minute they become available.  Professional also provides installation and technical support, trouble ticketing, premium knowledge base access, and quarterly Sugar Sales product updates,' he added.