Hosted product using sugarcrm as base

[calj]

Hi,
I wanted to build an online crm product (similar to Salesforce where multiple companies access the same instance and they have access to only the data that's tied to their organization) using Sugar Community Edition as the foundation. Had 3 questions related to that:

a) As long as I dont distribute the sourcecode, am I allowed to build such a product ?

b) Does anyone know of examples of companies which have done something similar?

c) How easy/difficult is it to configure Sugar to segment data access on the organization-level, where multiple companies can access the same instance of Sugar and yet have access to only the data that's tied to their organization ?

d) Is it possible to have multiple Organization-level Admin who can manage the users/settings specific to their org in this use-case?

Thanks,
Cal

[salesagility]

That's 4 questions:

a) As long as I dont distribute the sourcecode, am I allowed to build such a product ? - you can distribute the code but you'd then have to release the source

b) Does anyone know of examples of companies which have done something similar? - nope but would be interested in how you get on

c) How easy/difficult is it to configure Sugar to segment data access on the organization-level, where multiple companies can access the same instance of Sugar and yet have access to only the data that's tied to their organization ? - you could use a version of one of the Teams modules in sugarforge

d) Is it possible to have multiple Organization-level Admin who can manage the users/settings specific to their org in this use-case? - no - admin has rights across the application

[eNick]

Hi,
I wanted to build an online crm product (similar to Salesforce where multiple companies access the same instance and they have access to only the data that's tied to their organization) using Sugar Community Edition as the foundation. Had 3 questions related to that:

a) As long as I dont distribute the sourcecode, am I allowed to build such a product ?

b) Does anyone know of examples of companies which have done something similar?

c) How easy/difficult is it to configure Sugar to segment data access on the organization-level, where multiple companies can access the same instance of Sugar and yet have access to only the data that's tied to their organization ?

d) Is it possible to have multiple Organization-level Admin who can manage the users/settings specific to their org in this use-case?

Thanks,
Cal

First, bear in mind that Sugar themselves already offer exactly the same service you're suggesting. But...

Question A - you can do what you want with the source code. The only restriction is that you can't remove the "powered by SugarCRM" labels.

Question B - there are many companies that host multiple instances of Sugar (including my own). You'll find that it is far easier to simply use virtual hosting with seperate instances of Sugar than trying to shoe-horn and segment different companies into the same database. The code is relatively small, and the database footprint very good, so writing a script that installs another parallel instance is not difficult.

Question C - to do this properly (i.e. to a standard that means you aren't taken to court because you just revealed company A's data to company B) is virtually impossible. Hence my answer to question B.

Question D - if you do it as advised in Question B, then this problem just went away as everyone's in their own instance.

Problem is, by the time you've done all this, you're going to want to charge the client and it's going to be very difficult to justify charging for C.E. hosting when Sugar gives Pro hosting (just like SalesForce do) for only $30 a month.