SugarCRM Inc., a vendor of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, has announced the Atlanta Meet-Up Group, which is focused on Sugar best practices.

SugarCRM users and enthusiasts from the Atlanta metropolitan area gather on "Sugar Wednesday" to teach each other new SugarCRM capabilities and techniques, swap tips and tricks, and answer Sugar-related questions at the Atlanta SugarCRM Meet-Up Group.

David Gearhart, regional VP of sales for SugarCRM, said the meets are to "swap SugarCRM lessons learned and have select speakers provide hands-on instruction. More importantly, we get a chance to hear how others are using SugarCRM for their business. All skill levels are welcome."

Open to the public and free to join, the Atlanta SugarCRM Meet-Up Group convenes monthly on the second Wednesday of each month at 6:30 pm at Jocks & Jills Galleria, 1 Galleria Pkwy SE, Atlanta, GA 30339. For more information, please visit http://opensource.meetup.com/72/.

In early May SugarCRM announced plans to expand support for customers of the Oracle (News - Alert) Unbreakable Linux Support Program across all SugarCRM products.

Based on the growing demand, SugarCRM and Oracle can now provide their joint customers what SugarCRM officials call "a robust, fully supported product."

The support of Oracle Unbreakable Linux is "a direct result from the SugarCRM customers demanding high-quality, reliable CRM applications," said Paul Oh, director of technology alliances at SugarCRM. "SugarCRM has been a member of the Oracle open source partnership for the last two years, and this announcement expands our Oracle database integration into the Oracle Unbreakable Linux Support Program."

Sugar's commercial open source model is built on modern open source and Web 2.0 languages and relies heavily on customer feedback, community contributions and strategic partnerships to bring CRM features to market.

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David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.