vtiger, provider of enterprise-ready open source CRM solution, announced the release of vtiger CRM 5.0. vtiger business model helps small and medium businesses that need an alternate to expensive CRM solutions available in the market. vtiger has been downloaded close to 0.5 million times already, and ranks among top 5 most downloaded financial apps in sourceforge.net .

vtiger CRM is built over LAMP/WAMP stack and other third-party open source packages. vtiger CRM software can be installed in Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 and different types of Unix/Linux-based distributions, such as RedHat 7.2/8.0/9.0, Debian 3.0, SuSe 9.0, Fedora Core 3.0, Mandrake 10.0, and FreeBSD.

Enhanced features of vtiger CRM include:

*Ajax-based user interface: Completely redesigned by implementing the best breed of Web 2.0 technologies, such as AJAX, Tag clouds, and mashups with other Web services
*Color scheme: Provide users with the ability to choose the available best color schemes like alpha gray, blue lagoon, and wood spice. Besides, the community is also encouraged to participate in the new scheme creations.
*Enterprise-grade security management: Customers can enable access control to the users according to their organization hierarchy in real time. New security management functions are granular and flexible for
implementation across the organization of any size.

*Calendaring: Users can use the Calendar along with CRM core functions or as a standalone Personal Organizer. Users can also share personal calendar with other users & groups, set reminders, and plan recurring calls, meetings & to dos.
*Email client: Inbuilt Email Client for handling both Outbound and Inbound mails. Customers can make use of mass mailing options here.
*Marketing campaigns customization: Full-scale customization utilities including multiple custom objects, pick-list editor, multi-select value drop down lists, drag & drop home page layout, global-level Page view customization, date & time formats, currency conversions, etc.
*Reports & Dashboard: Fully customizable reports with 20+ pre-built dashboards are available.
*Order Management: Streamlined sales and inventory management functions with products, price books, quotes, orders, and invoices. Additionally customers can manage multiple tax classes, discounts and rates.
*Marketing Automation: Create and manage campaigns, execute personal email marketing, and track success rate of the campaigns.

"I can sum it up in one word -- fabulous! I had been looking intensely at other systems for about two weeks and couldn't find one that really suited before I stumbled across vtiger," said Edwin Wigmore, Sales Manager of the Sysdoc Group. "Installing it was a breeze and it has some of the most advanced, but easy to use features I've ever seen. I recommend it unreservedly," he added.

"vtiger CRM has passed through more than 10 development cycles to ensure that the product is enterprise-ready and usable," said Shankar R.N.S, Product Manager at vtiger "Usability, L&F and Security have been the prime focus of this release." he added.