Linux.com

John Roberts, 38, has an enterprise CRM applications track record spanning 11 years. Prior to co-founding SugarCRM, he held product management and sales engineering positions at E.piphany, BroadVision, Baan/Aurum Software, and IBM. SugarCRM started in spring 2004 and has been a disruptive force in the customer relationship management software market ever since, competing with such entrenched companies as Siebel Systems, SAP, and Salesforce.com. Roberts spoke Tuesday in a panel discussion at the Enterprise Ventures conference in Redwood City, Calif.

ITMJ: Why has SugarCRM grown so quickly into an open source household name in barely one year?