Will Open Source Drive CRM Growth?

Open source has its share of challenges, but its biggest fans extol the platform as open, malleable, flexible and cost-effective. Nowhere are these qualities more in demand — or lauded — than in the customer relationship management (CRM) market. In fact, open-source attributes not only play well into the small-but-growing CRM niche, theycould be the catalyst that drives its growth.

There’s definitely a case to be made here. Open source CRM is often more cost-effective than its proprietary counterparts. It allows an organization to test-drive software. It’s easily modified, which gives the channel leeway to tailor it to their customers’ IT environment. Solution providers with necessary skills can charge for related services at a premium.

Open source is also strong bet for organizations leveraging social CRM. The biggest reason: It allows customers to add data links to social media and tailor them to suit their business needs instead of waiting for a proprietary software vendor to do the job...