Apatar, a provider of open source software tools for the data
integration market, has announced connectivity to the SugarCRM open
source suite. It's platform independent, so runs on Mac OS X, Windows
and Linux systems.

The new SugarCRM connector is designed to integrate data between the
customer relation management system and a variety of third-party data
sources, allowing for this data to be filtered, validated, and
cleansed.

Provided with Apatar's drag and drop interface, the SugarCRM
connector doesn't require coding skills and can be deployed by almost
any business user. With the new SugarCRM connector, Apatar enables
its users to link customer information between databases (such as
MySQL, Microsoft SQL, Oracle), files (Microsoft Excel spreadsheets,
CSV/TXT files), applications (Salesforce.com), and the top Web 2.0
destinations (Flickr, Amazon S3, RSS feeds).

According to Gartner, corporate developers spend approximately 65
percent of their effort building bridges between applications. With
Apatar's visual toolset, SugarCRM users can perform even a complex
data integration job without having to write a single line of a code,
the company says. Upgraded with the new SugarCRM connector, Apatar
simplifies the integration process and allows both users and
developers to synchronize data between the SugarCRM suite and other
on-premises or on-demand data sources and applications.

Prior to entering into SugarCRM, data can be filtered, validated, and
cleansed using Apatar's data quality capabilities. Apatar eliminates
data duplication, supports e-mail and postal addresses verification,
and more. Both the SugarCRM system and Apatar's new connector are
distributed as open source products.