SugarCRM "on track" for an IPO
(Credit:
SugarCRM)
No, not this year. But as CNET's Martin LaMonica's article points out, SugarCRM is well on its way to an initial public offering (IPO).
"Now we're at a point where we're acquiring customers extremely fast," Roberts said. "We've gone from 'we hope to (go public)' to 'we absolutely are on track.'"
Roberts anticipates that the company, which now has 125 employees, can grow to $100 million in yearly revenue in the next couple of years.
This is obviously great for SugarCRM, but it's equally great for the commercial open-source market, as well. And, hence, for customers. But SugarCRM is not alone in this....
I know of several open-source companies that are on track to exceed $10 million in sales this year, growing beyond $20 million next year. When you're on that sort of growth trajectory, getting to $100 million is a near-term exercise (2009/2010).
In the meantime, there's still lots of execution that needs to happen. The good news, however, is that it's getting easier and easier to start and ramp an open-source company.
All of which is good for customers, because it gives them a greater population of excellent open-source products from which to choose. Just think: within five years there will be no compelling reason to continue to shackle your IT budget to the vagaries of proprietary vendors' whims....
Full disclosure: I am a SugarCRM advisor and shareholder.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
[http://The new version also includes a Module Builder that lets business users visually create and share their own application add-ons.|http://The new version also includes a Module Builder that lets business users visually create and share their own application add-ons.]
Module Builder is an enormous step for them, and I expect to see a vibrant partner ecosystem to sprout from it - to their benefit.