Open Source CRM Pulls in Open Source Search
I read “12 Open Source CRM Options.” I think of CRM as a synonym for customer experience or CRM as an easy way to suck down a top salesperson’s contact list when he or she heads to greener pastures. I know. I am shortsighted.
The write up surprised me because I did not know there were a dozen open source CRM solutions, components, or widgets. I assumed there were the big buck systems from Oracle and Salesforce.com. I was uninformed.
I had heard of SugarCRM because one of the proprietary search vendors supports the system. I had not heard of:
Vtiger (a variant of SugarCRM), SuiteCRM, Fat Free CRM, Odoo, Zurmo, EspoCRM, SplendidCRM, OpenCRX, X2Engfine, Concourse Suite, or CentraView.
Well, there you.
My reaction to this basket of “suites” is that search is going to be part of the offering. When the baked in solution falls short, then the licensees will look for more robust solutions. For me, that means taking a look at the open source search solutions. ElasticSearch and Sphinx Search come to mind, but there are others.
I would not be too keen to license one of the proprietary search systems for three reasons:
- Try open source and if it works, the money can be used for other things. Raises or hiring a tastier consultant
- There are satisfactory information retrieval solutions that run from the cloud, on premises, or in a hybrid mode
- The hassles of integrating an open source and a proprietary system can be sidestepped. Integration is never a walk in the park, but it seems that open source begets open source.
Stephen E Arnold, October 8, 2014
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