Box.net is a web-based storage service that allows businesses to share, manage and access their content online (documents, media and other files). Today they've announced integration with Salesforce CRM, which means that Salesforce users will be able to use all their content on box.net within the Salesforce CRM platform.

Salesforce CRM has a large user base which most likely will benefit from this integration, however this will incur additional costs. Box.net usually charges $15/user/month for a business account, and most likely these costs are the same for Salesforce CRM users (or maybe they offer a discount, haven't been able to find that information yet, but I know for sure that the amount they can store is unlimited).

SugarCRM Inc., announced last week (August 27, 2008) the release of SugarCRM 5.1, a new major version of the well-known commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, which has an improved reporting and analytics engine, as well as additional wireless capabilities (like the support of SugarCRM for the popular BlackBerry® and iPhone™ smartphones).

According to their press release, this new version comes after a thorough beta testing process, during which SugarCRM 5.1 was installed more than 10,000 times by over 25,000 users. Quite impressive development in the four years that have passed since Sugar Community Edition received founding, period during which this edition and additional components were downloaded over 5 million times and reached over 80,000 registered community members (including 14,000 developers that created 500 extensions and the translation of SugarCRM in over 75 languages - more infor at www.sugarforge.org). The entire SugarCRM's user base consists of over 400,000 users on 50,000 installations.