Book Image

Implementing SugarCRM 5.x

Book Image

Implementing SugarCRM 5.x

Overview of this book

SugarCRM is a popular customer relationship management system. It is an ideal way for small-medium business to try out a CRM system without committing large sums of money. Although SugarCRM is carefully designed for ease of use, attaining measurable business gains requires careful planning and research. This book will give you all the information you need to start using this powerful CRM system. It is the definitive guide to implementing SugarCRM. Whether you are wondering exactly what benefits CRM can bring or you have already learned about CRM systems but have yet to implement one or you're working with SugarCRM already, this book will show you how to get maximum benefit from this exciting product. It demonstrates how to install SugarCRM and also how to get the most out of it by customizing it and integrating CRM into your organization as per your needs. Focused on the needs of the enterprise, this book provides a solution-driven approach for both business and IT specialists to get the most from this powerful and popular Open Source application. It begins with a general discussion about CRM. You will then learn the benefits of such systems, and then explore SugarCRM and its unique value. You will then go through the guidelines for installing and making deployment selections that are set out alongside information for identifying, planning, and applying customizations. Training guidelines and ongoing administrative tasks will be discussed as you progress further into the book. A brief overview of SugarCRM 6.0 is provided at the end of the book.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Implementing SugarCRM 5.x
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
Preface

Web-based application platforms


In today's computing world, there are three major web-based application development and delivery platforms. They are as follows:

  • Microsoft's proprietary .NET platform

  • Sun Microsystems's partially open Java platform

  • The Open Source LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) platform

Each of these environments provides a comprehensive set of tools for developers to build and test web-based applications and for users of the applications to access them. In addition, all have their dedicated followers and advocates.

SugarCRM utilizes the latter of the aforementioned technologies, a stack developed by the open source community that is widely known as LAMP.

LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (plus Perl and Python—two other popular open source scripting languages beyond the scope of this book).

The LAMP stack looks like the following:

As you can see, Linux and Apache are the base upon which the LAMP stack is built. They form a formidable system that has helped immensely in...