Astidian Blog

Business Challenge: To integrate campus student information systems at 11 separate campuses, and centralize the management of the marketing and recruitment process

Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform, SugarCRM system

Hardware: Dell servers

Benefits: Student information is available with realtime access, faster reports help increase returns on sales and marketing activities, prevented vendor lock-in, increased visibility of systems, increased efficiency, and decreased human errors

“With JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform and Red Hat Enterprise Linux supporting our SugarCRM system, we have gained added visibility into our business and increased returns from sales and marketing activities.”
–Richard Pany, group CIO, INTI Education Group

Download the full case study: rht_cs_inti_izeno_ap_web.pdf

About Astidian Systems
Astidian Systems is one of Africa's premier providers of open source solutions including Red Hat operating systems, Red Hat JBoss, SugarCRM and Compiere ERP platforms.
For more information please contact us at info @ astidian.com

Here is a list of top 10 Open source Enterprise Applications

Top 10 OS Enterprise Applications

SugarCRM Announces New User Interface, Enhanced Features with Beta Release of Sugar 6

Company celebrates the fifth birthday of the founding of SugarForge, SugarCRM's open source development community at SugarCon

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. - April 13, 2010- SugarCRM, the world's leading provider of open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, today announced the beta release of Sugar 6, a landmark release for SugarCRM's flagship products. Sugar 6 introduces a new user interface that places a premium on speed, simplicity, and interoperability with other web applications and mobile devices. The company also announced it has made the primary source code repository for Sugar Community Edition publicly accessible as it celebrates the fifth birthday of SugarForge, the world's largest open source CRM community. The announcements were made at SugarCon, the company's user and developer conference being held at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco.

"Over the last 10 years, technology innovation has moved ahead at an amazing clip while the design and usability of CRM applications has stagnated. Until now." said Larry Augustin, CEO of SugarCRM. "Sugar 6 delivers a look, feel and user experience that consumers of popular social networking and other collaboration tools will appreciate."

SPEED - Fast Setup, Faster Performance
Sugar 6 is designed for speed. Upon entering the application, users are initially welcomed with a revamped guided User Setup wizard. When setup is complete, users will find a CRM application designed for speed and simplicity. The Sugar Shortcut Bar is a persistent toolbar throughout the application that allows users to perform common tasks in one click, including creating an account, contact, sales opportunity, document, note, task or logging a meeting or call. Usability tests show that Sugar 6 requires 20 percent fewer clicks to navigate than in previous versions.

Included in the Shortcut Bar, users will also see a context-aware Global Search field which filters search results based on the module in use (e.g., Contacts, Opportunities and Accounts) and produces results without leaving the page.

"We love it. Additions like global search and the shortcut bar are the kinds of productivity enhancements our users have been asking for in the system. And Sugar has done an incredible job creating the most modern look and feel for a CRM system, while also significantly increasing usability," said Chad Hutchins, Business Development Web Specialist at Milsoft Utility Solutions, a leading provider of smart grid technology solutions.

SIMPLICITY - Clean, Bold User Interface that is simple to learn and navigate
Sugar 6 delivers a clean, bold look with new buttons and icons that allow users to perform tasks more easily while increasing the information density of each screen. Simplified default views, inline filtering and one-click actions conform to the multitasking environment common to busy sales people. For example, users can use the Shortcut Bar to quickly log an incoming call or assign a task without ever leaving the existing screen.

In each view, users will see module menus that show where the user is in the application as well as providing information about previously viewed pages, filtered results based on user permissions, and convenient tab naming that allows users to more easily navigate Sugar across multiple browser tabs.

"I'm a veteran CRM user, and I was blown away by Sugar's new approach in Sugar 6," said Martin Umed, Regional Sales Manager at Control Technology Corporation, a leading provider of programmable automation controllers based in Hopkington, MA. "They obviously focused on the single biggest challenge in adopting/using a CRM package, the user experience - and they read the room perfectly. Sugar 6.0 amounts to a towering home run - the new interface, with its new efficiency and speed, blurs the distinction between a client and browser applications, and will have an immediate impact on your bottom line sales productivity."

ACCESSIBILITY - Beautiful on Mobile, Embracing the Cloud
In addition to the new user interface and simple set-up and navigations, Sugar 6 also includes native application support for leading smart phone operating systems, including for the iPhone, Android and Blackberry smart phones. SugarCRM is also one of the first to market with a native application for the Apple iPad.

Sugar 6 offers SugarCRM's popular Cloud Connectors to third-party data service providers such as JigSaw, Hoover's, and LinkedIn by default, allowing users to obtain the most up-to-date account and lead information directly within SugarCRM. In addition Sugar Plug-Ins for Microsoft Outlook, Word and Excel are built into the application, allowing users to instantly access and integrate the popular productivity programs from with SugarCRM.

Sugar 6 is available for review and testing at http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/OnlinePreview.

Celebrating SugarForge
SugarCRM also announced that is has made the primary source code repository for Sugar Community Edition publicly accessible at SugarForge, SugarCRM's open source development community. Since 2005, SugarForge has grown from a single project and three developers to over 22,000 developers, 800 projects and close to eight million downloads of SugarCRM and its related components.
The Sugar Community souce code repository is available at http://www.sugarforge.org/content/community/participate/svn.php

About SugarCRM
SugarCRM is the world's leading provider of open source customer relationship management (CRM) software. Over 6,000 customers and more than half a million users rely on SugarCRM to execute marketing programs, grow sales, retain customers and create custom business applications. Leading publications such as CRM Magazine, InfoWorld and eWeek praise SugarCRM for its ease-of-use, flexibility and open design. SugarCRM runs on the leading cloud computing platforms, including Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, Sugar On-Demand and Private Clouds, offering customers unparalleled choice and control of their data and deployments.

For more information, call (011)-796-5205 or email info @ astidian.com

Defining a true interoperable standard within Government or any organization with diverse systems can best be achieved through SOA architecture design.

In Indonesia a Proof of Concept was done by the IT ministry - here is a 2006 (!!) presentation:

http://www.slideshare.net/flatburger/pasir-10-final-report-sp202

Astidian has partnered with Ithuta to present best of breed project management training courses. Please follow the Ithuta blog to keep up to date with news and monthly training schedule. Astidian now offers a training center at their Fourways, Johannesburg offices.