Open-Xchange, a provider of open source groupware, and SugarCRM, a provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, today announced a cooperation to integrate data from SugarCRM and Open-Xchange collaboration software.

The integration enables users to gather and aggregate data from their social network profiles (such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Xing), as well as their SugarCRM application, to store it in an Open-Xchange address book as well as share it with others. This information can then be moved to the SugarCRM application. In addition, the SugarCRM data imported into Open-Xchange can be accessed from smartphones, or published to the Internet.

"SugarCRM is the first software to build on the social networking capabilities in Open-Xchange, which opens the potential for a whole new class of integrated solutions," said Juergen Geck, Open-Xchange CTO. "Social Open-Xchange in combination with SugarCRM will create an ecosystem of data that spans many social networks and software programs."

"We see incredible potential for data integration, for Social CRM. The focus of the IT industry is moving towards how data can be shared among users to increase knowledge among groups of people," said Clint Oram, vice president of products and co-founder, SugarCRM. "We believe pooling previously disparate islands of information can deliver additional value to our users."

Open-Xchange uses a data format that is based on work at microformats.org, for data import and export. The Open-Xchange Micro Format (OXMF, oxmf.org) lets users import their data from social networks and other software applications, manage it, and export it back to other supporters of the format - whether those are hosted/Saas, on-premise or a combination of those.

SugarCRM has integrated support for OXMF into its software, which is available at www.sugarforge.org/projects/sugaroxmf. Open-Xchange can be tested at http://ox.io.

Open-Xchange offers open source collaboration software for both on-premise and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) implementations using exactly the same source code -- enabling SaaS providers and on-premise channel partners to leverage their respective strengths. System integrators and resellers can partner with service providers to offer hosted Open-Xchange to their customer base without the upfront investments required to set up a complex and secure hosting infrastructure. SaaS providers can benefit from resellers' and system integrators' local and regional customer base and in-depth technical and consulting expertise.