Sugarcon 2012 in Review

This was my first Sugarcon as a SugarCRM Business Partner and user. As we saw on BP day, about 2/3 or 200 people in the room were also at their first Sugarcon, many of whom became partners this year, some as recently as the Friday before it started.

Impressive for any vendor to have that type of growth.

We also found out in turn that SugarCRM nearly doubled in size their employees to about 350 total including contractors/consultants. Many of the employees were here and it was great to meet so many people. Oddly enough for me, I met few developers, but then I have few issues with SugarCRM that require me meeting the developers. On the other hand, the executive teams and regional sales execs were openly available and mixed with everyone and most importantly answered questions uniformly without the  usual "go ask him" or "let me get back to you" or any spin. Very refreshing. Plus they want input and encourage it from different angles as they are poised to grow into more enterprises.

More numbers for you to think about:
11 Million downloads of the Free Community Edition 
1 Million active users of SugarCRM

380 Business Partners
40 New Business Partners in Q1 2012 alone
30,000+ developers
1,000 projects
400 VARs

I met many partners and we had discussions around go to market ideas, competitive discussions and where people have come from and where they want to go with SugarCRM. Some look forward to the IBM efforts but are wary as a Business partner what this means to them. Size matters, so does certifications and smaller partners will face similar issues to what the IBM smaller business partners have faced the last 2 years. If you are on the path towards growing your business and reaching higher levels of customer numbers life will be good for you.

The event itself was run like a large user group meeting which extended the more family and friendly like atmosphere, not bad for about 1,000 people. I compare it to other IBM events which is probably unfair given their size and stature, but in my world few events are this size, they are either smaller or larger. Not very formal about anything, they had a nice app for iPhones (My Android device had issues), good breaks and healthy snacks (It was in San Francisco) split into technical tracks and sales/sponsor tracks as well as more private business partner training sessions.

Guy Kawasaki was a great presenter, he had also spoken at Lotusphere this year I wonder when I will hear him next this year.

The analysts and pundits that provided their insights were for the most part on the money but also not tight or heavy handed. Basically everything was light and informal and I credit the SugarCRM motto of "User First" with being so open as well as being an open sourced company.

The Exploratorium is a great place to go and everyone should go when in San Francisco.

Partner training was an added bonus and I spent my time not on the tech side, I am not a developer, but on the sales and business sessions looking at the SugarCRM methodology to encourage sales with a process that works. Bruce, Olivier and Erin did some great enablement sessions and roll plays.

On a personal level kudos to the Kosher caterer in Oakland, that steak was huge and a big surprise. I also had a "baseball card" signed by Clint Oram, the SugarCRM CTO. Key speakers had these cards made up by SugarCRM which were handed out. The uncut sheet is probably very valuable.

My only complaint, aside from my android issues, is that the sessions were not recorded. When you have 6-8 parallel sessions running much is missed and slides don't cut it. A number of customers expressed this as well something to think about for next year. My session on the "Boss is Anti-Social" will be set up as a webinar or podcast at some point soon.

Congratulations to Chris Bucholtz and everyone involved in making the event so successful.

See you next year in New York, Waldorf Astoria, April 7-11, 2013. If you want more details they have the website up already over here.

My Session on IBM SmartCloud and SugarCRM

My slides on IBM SmartCloud and SugarCRM can be found here.

IBM is using SugarCRM Internally

One of the things heard this morning at SugarCon was that IBM is working on rolling out SugarCRM to the company.

This is a huge boost of course for SugarCRM and for IBM and it's sales teams and Business Partners. In doing so, IBM will be putting aside Siebel.

SugarCRM which is looking to grow their Enterprise business, needs this boost. In many ways it brings validity to what many of us have known for years. Mainly that older solutions are cumbersome, expensive and they preclude others from excelling at their jobs.

With this roll out there are integration points in place today for IBM SmartCloud Engage (previously LotusLive Engage) and now there will be IBM Connections integration. More on this topic coming in a different blog post.

If you had been at the Partner day or the Keynote this morning, you may have felt, as I did, that substituting Lotusphere/IBM for Sugarcon/SugarCRM you may think you were in Orlando. Even the music/videos out front had a similar sound/feel. so naturally I feel at home. Just missing my yellowverse friends.

But as I meet new friends, customers and partners, I am struck by the feeling of deja vu. I have seen this similar growth and plans way back in R4 of Lotus Notes. yes prior to IBM buying Lotus, the company was also trying to break into the Enterprise levels. And IBM helped them get there in many ways.

Now SugarCRM is leaning on IBM to help guide the future, make inroads into bigger clients and integrate with their existing systems and extend out to newer ones. It is a good working relationship that can only help SugarCRM. But I wonder what IBM will get from this.

Back in R4 time, email was just coming out and it was the right time, right product. Now, CRM is not new nor is SugarCRM by far the only player out there, though they are the 3rd largest CRM vendor out there with over 1 million active users, 80,000+ organizations use it and 30,000 registered developers.

Their view, reiterated by Larry Augustin, CEO and Clint Oram, CTO of SugarCRM, is the USER is what is most important. Again, just like Lotus Notes wanted to help the user do more, share more and grow more. It's a great parallel.

Sugarcon grows each year and next year will be in New York at the Waldorf Astoria, April 7-11, 2013. If you want to be part of this great run, join now, try it out. You can download the mostly full installation, called Community Edition, and try it on your own.LAMP or Windows your choice. Go get it from www.sugarcrm.com

If we, as partners, can leverage SugarCRM to augment our IBM solutions it may help IBM Connections grow similarly to how Lotus Notes grew years ago.

My session tomorrow discusses this and more from a practical angle, not a sales/marketing pitch. looking forward to this future and greater information to be coming from this relationship.

Business Anti-Social: Why the Boss Doesn't Get It

This is my slidedeck from the Sugarcon 2012 session I just finished about ways to help executives be more social. It also covers some ideas around out thinking your competition and how to get stuff done without approval.

The link to my slides page is here. Slideshare link as well.

SugarCon 2012 Starts Today

Business Partner day starts today. I flew in last night and got a phone call at 6am from a client with a server down. So much for sleep.

Took the 5 block walk to the Palace Hotel where the conference is located. Along the way saw many examples of inner city art, sculptures, exhibitions of artists work in almost any and every place. The things I miss working a 1/2 mile from home normally. Will try to get some pictures later this week. On the flip side sad to see so many homeless and questionable activities going on in this part of the city.

This morning Larry Augustin opened with the state of numbers. Where Sugar stands, where we as Business partners stand. He made a point, which I had put into my sessions, making life easier for the user is key.

Some great marketing plans coming out, Google ad-words campaigns now part of the ecosystem as well. Nice to see when a Vendor knows how to help their partners. The Zift program is really nice and easy to use.

Great to see other Sugar Partners in person finally and to see SugarCRM employees as well that I haven't met in person yet.

Social online helps with social in person. Now if my memory worked as well.

Will post more over the week. If you are out here, catch me either on the SugarCon app or find me at my sessions.

2nd Session Speaking at SugarCon 2012

 

An even bigger surprise to me yesterday when I was researching something for SugarCon and found out I was doing a 2nd session!
The first time, I found out via blog post, this time via Google search.
I had wondered about the session because it is one which I am quite sure no one else was doing, namely:

Full Power Collaboration with IBM SmartCloud Engage and SugarCRM

The session was meant to be about the points of integration between SugarCRM and LotusLive IBM SmartCloud for Social Business. However, it was also about how to integrate older  Domino CRM applications into SugarCRM. Since SugarCRM bought the iEnterprise CRM solution it is not such a rip and replace.


ideally we want to help every company with a Domino infrastructure looking at SugarCRM to recognize that it is not an all or nothing effort. There are choices and using 2-3 client case studies we will be outlining the options and demo them as examples, where posible.


So if you will be in San Francisco April 23-26 let me know and if you have SugarCRM questions or Domino CRM questions ask away.

I will be Speaking at SugarCon 2012

Decided to go back to where it all started for me. Databases and CRM.

Eons ago I wrote some of these in Dbase 3+ and through the decades went through the ACT, Goldmine and Lotus Notes home grown written CRM apps. Speaking of which John Ferrara of Goldmine has a new CRM offering, check out www.nimble.com if you like Tweetdeck and are in Marketing or Sales it has some great promise.

Since looking into CRM's again I realized something has not changed. It's still a "look at me and use me" world but it's full of "let someone else do it people". So in the spirit of Social, Collaboration and CRM, and a bit of competitiveness, I submitted an abstract:

  

Business Anti-Social: Why the Boss Doesn’t Use SugarCRM

CRM is a huge investment by your organization. Yet why do many Executives not take an active role in it's usage? Don't they want to be social? The answer is not so simple and sometimes even the opposite of what you may expect to hear.
We will discuss some reasons for this problem and how to work around them.
We will encourage others to take the first step to a better dialogue with your clients. SugarCRM is that first step in so many ways but so few make good use of it.
Strategies used by other vendors will be touched upon because there are personality types you need to understand.
How to encourage management to embrace the Social Business aspects is key to helping your business go up against your competition...shouldn't your executives be in on this?

I know a bit self serving of a title, but the reality is some of the same issues we face on the Lotus side appear on the CRM side as well. The SugarCon blog posted this about my session:

This one’s not just about Sugar, but really about all CRM applications; one major reason for failure in all CRM implementations is the lack of executive buy-in. Keith Brooks of SAS Group plans to talk about the reasons behind this phenomena and he’ll suggest ways to negotiate different executive agendas. What does he want people to learn from this session? “How to be a social business no matter what your executives think, say or do,” he says.

So there you have it, a little social, a little CRM, a little psychology and we will learn some things along the way too.

On behalf of my partners at the SAS Group  I look forward to representing us in San Francisco at SugarCon 2012. April 23-26 at The Palace Hotel.

Maybe this time I will get to hear and meet Guy Kawasaki, sadly I missed him at Lotusphere last month.