Max W. Blackmer, Jr.

Small business owners and their employees frequently misunderstand personal programs and client/server applications work. I hope to explain the differences between Personal programs and Client/Server applications that is easy to understand for non-technical business owners and their employees.

Many small businesses owner and employees see a computer on their desktop and at home. They usually buy a program and install it and work with it on a single machine. The program you install typically handles all the things a program needs to do on one personal computer. These programs are single user and do not have the added complexity to deal with multiple users at the same time. This simplifies the program by not worrying about users trying to change the same information, and worrying about overwriting another persons changes. If you want to share the file you have to copy the file and send it to other users. This method of sharing leads to multiple copies and multiple revisions that are not in sync with each other.

There are personal programs that do allow sharing of data files with simultaneous users. This works great for small groups of people that are connected by a network in a small office. Typically these programs use a file sharing method that does have limits. Most file sharing methods will have limits of 5 to 10 users. This can be a slow method because one program may have to lock the whole file or parts of the file that another user may need to see or edit at the same time. The file locking method has many contention issues. Users can be locked out until a special unlock tool is run to free up the file locking. These problems occur when a system crashed or networking problem happened during a critical point when locking is required. This can also result in file corruption at times.

SugarCRM runs as a client/server Application and is web based. This give a great advantage over installed applications. Your client is a web browser such as Internet Explorer (also called IE) or FireFox. Most all computers have a web browser pre-installed so there is no special setup needed for the client side of the application. The main advantage of having a web based application is you can be anywhere you have access to a web browser to gain access to the application. All you have to remember is your user name and password. The server houses all the necessary programs and gives you a view of all information that is in the application. Where ever you happen to be with the most current information available. This also allows multiple users to share information from a single source. This allows for a more collaborative work environment with no one having outdated or out of sync information.

The other aspect is the ability to support several thousands of users at the same time in a client-server application. So it is quite scalable compared to personal programs with sharing capabilities. The server handles the storage and maintenance of the information while the client side handles the display and rendering of the information. This division of the workload allows the client-server application to out preform the personal programs and keep the information consistent for all users.

What is SugarCRM you ask? Well, it is a web based application that is open-source (Open-source means you can change the way the program works if you know how to program). SugarCRM can be found at http://www.sugarcrm.com SugarCRM allows you to track and improve your relationships with your customers. You can think of it as super powered contact manager that relates everything you do with your customer from a phone call, email and advertising campaigns.

What is my relationship with SugarCRM? I am well known in the SugarCRM community considered a rock star according to this page SugarForge. I also was a speaker at the first SugarCon on Scalability of SugarCRM on how to scale to 25,000+ simmultianus users.  I do deployment, hosting and Application Development for SugarCRM and Custom Software.