Concursive Launches Concourse Suite 5.0

Concursive Corporation (formerly Centric CRM, Inc.), a leading developer of open source Customer Relationship Management (CRM), content management, and Enterprise 2.0 technologies, has released a new version of its core software suite. The new application, Concourse Suite 5.0, integrates CRM, website creation, content management and Enterprise 2.0 technologies into a complete front office solution.

A Java-based application with a standards-based plug-in architecture, Concourse Suite 5.0 allows third-party developers to integrate applications and share data with key company applications including HR, financial, inventory/delivery, and logistics systems. It is designed for deployment across the ‘extended enterprise,' allowing larger organizations to have simultaneous on-premise and multi-tenant deployments which share information and tighten collaboration across divisions and workgroups. This is ideal for: companies that want to work more closely with dealer networks; companies with separate locations; and for franchise operations. The suite is also designed for mid-sized companies that want the functionality, performance, and security demanded by larger enterprises.

Modules within the suite include Concourse CRM, Concourse Web, Concourse Content, and Concourse Team, incorporating traditional CRM functions with website authoring, content management, and Enterprise 2.0 collaboration features. Users can select modules within the suite to match their business needs or use the full range of capabilities.

Concourse Suite provides a cost-effective and feature-rich method for communication and collaboration within extended enterprises including suppliers, customers, resellers, distributors, franchisees, or agents. An extended enterprise deployment of Concourse Suite provides each affiliated entity with an independent, fully functional, on-demand system.

Michael Harvey, executive vice president at Concursive said, "Businesses of all sizes are faced with the challenge of how to acquire and retain customers in the always-connected age we live in. With Concourse Suite 5.0 we have given businesses a single application that integrates all front office systems and allows businesses to interact and connect with their customers, and their own business network, in a way that revolutionizes customer management."

Kevin Cushing, chief executive officer for AlphaGraphics, Inc., a Concursive customer who has implemented Concourse Suite 5.0, said, "We strive to deliver outstanding service to both our clients and our nearly 300 franchise owners around the world. Concourse Suite allows us to build and support our extended enterprise, which includes our business partners, clients, franchisees and suppliers. Using this solution, we can deploy an on-premise corporate CRM system while we host a secure multi-tenant system for each stakeholder, providing them with their own copy of these powerful tools."

Cushing concluded, "Because each instance of Concourse Suite in our extended enterprise can communicate with other sites, we can collaborate in entirely new ways as an organization, ensuring that all of the owners in our franchise network have the business information they need at their fingertips."

Concourse Suite: An open platform

In addition to making its source code available, Concourse Suite 5.0 adds new capabilities to make it a true platform for third-party developers. A software developer kit (SDK) that allows users to work with a public Application Programming Interface (API) to access each object in the system has been released under the LGPL and can be freely re-distributed with other products. The Portlet and Portal capability used in the web content management system has been built into every other major module of the suite. The application ships with a number of pre-built Portlets including a variety of graphical dashboards and spreadsheet-like data Portlets. This integrated support for the industry standard JSR-168 Portlet specification allows any Java developer to add further functionality without modifying any of Concourse Suite's 3 million lines of underlying source code. The Portlets that Concursive itself develops will be released under an OSI-certified license in the near future.

Next Generation SaaS: Multi-tenancy with Deployment Flexibility

The Enterprise version of Concourse Suite incorporates a true multi-tenant architecture where a single logical instance of the application can support a large number of tenants (i.e., separate organizations who use completely independent configurations of the application). In fact, a single logical instance of Concourse Suite can support literally tens of thousands of tenants—each with a large numbers of individual users—on standard, off-the-shelf hardware. The Suite offers benefits that go beyond the ‘walled garden" approach of traditional SaaS deployments, however. Unlike traditional SaaS systems which force a one-size fits-all approach on subscribers, Concourse Suite customers can decide what deployment model fits their business best: traditional SaaS where all IT services are outsourced to Concursive, a private multi-tenant system running on dedicated hardware but managed by Concursive, or an on-premise multi-tenant system that the customer operates themselves for the benefit of their own affiliates.

Alongside its applicability for such large scale deployments, Concourse Suite 5.0 delivers an intuitive web-based interface. It installs in minutes on virtually any combination of hardware, operating system, web servers, and databases and features "unbreakable upgrades" that require simply copying a new application file to the web server. The new updated user interface features graphical dashboards and simplified navigation.

Concursive hosts a large multi-tenant system for SMB customers. A free five-user hosted system is available at www.consursive.com.

Web and Enterprise Content Management Features

As the web is the first point of contact between organizations and third parties, it is vital that web content is integrated into a front-office solution. Concourse Suite 5.0 achieves this through a range of highly compelling features that are vital for any business that uses its website as a touchpoint for prospects, customers, partners or stakeholders.

• Fully integrated website creation and management, turning a company's website into a full member of the sales team
• Integrated document management with version control
• User-access via a role-based permission system
• Handle any type of file, including media files
• Fully indexed for detailed searches
• Document folders can be private or public, the latter ready to be published on the Concourse 5.0 web content management system
• Tightly integrated: for example, web forms completed by customers feed directly as leads into the CRM system, flagged for follow up by the sales team
• E-Commerce capabilities including a product catalog and shopping cart
• Built-in product catalog that can be instantly published to the website, including images, pricing information, and item descriptions

Collaboration & Project Management features

• Ability to create shared team workspaces including blogs, discussion forums, document repositories, and project plans
• Portal access for external users, allowing a business's customers to update their contact information, access relevant documents and check status on orders/queries

Pricing, Licensing and Availability

Concourse Suite 5.0 is immediately available, either as a hosted Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application with low monthly user-based pricing or as a standalone software application. Fees for the SaaS offering are $50 per user per month, and for the standalone, $400 per user per year. Free 5-user versions of the fully functional Enterprise edition of both the on-demand and on-premise systems are available at the Concursive website, www.concursive.com. A Community edition of Concourse Suite 5.0 is available in source-code form only, licensed under the Centric Public License (CPL).

About Concursive Corporation

Concursive Corporation is the developer of two advanced enterprise-class open source business productivity applications, Concourse Suite (formerly Centric CRM) and Team Elements. Both are Java/J2EE-based web applications that run on virtually any standard platform, whether proprietary or open source. They have been in continuous development for almost seven years, share identical architectures, and are fully integrated.

Concursive's products are used today by Fortune 500 companies in large configurations and by thousands of smaller enterprises. Concourse Suite includes all common CRM modules and adds capabilities such as Website Authoring, integrated Web Content Management, Document Management, Customer Surveys, and advanced Help Desk functions. Team Elements delivers a complete Enterprise 2.0 team collaboration and community management suite. Concursive is a founding member of the Open Solutions Alliance and a member of the Red Hat Exchange (RHX). Among the investors in the company is Intel Capital. For more information, visit www.concursive.com

SOURCE: Concursive Corporation