DataSync Business News

Lets face it: fund raising and tracking volunteers and schedules is a full time position or several positions for any nonprofit business. So how do you organize your post it notes and hectic information so that you can actually make the best use of your resources?

Some of our nonprofit customers have used Datasync to track employees, volunteers, revenue generation and follow through with campaigns. The DataSync solution has combined the best resources that address common needs to create efficient fund raising strategies.

Due to our similar goals in supporting the non-profit community and education initiatives particularly through technology, DataSync has recently added a discount program for its products and services. Visit our website at www.datasyncsuite.com to sign up for a demo and contact us about your needs and see how we can help your business succeed.

DataSync is proud to announce that the latest build of DataSync Suite Community Edition is now available on SourceForge.org. DataSync has selected SourceForge as the primary means to manage community edition releases, and will be publishing upcoming release builds early and often. DataSync Suite Community Edition is currently in alpha stage, and will be released as a production software platform sometime in early 2009. However the release builds are already used by a variety of industries from around the globe. DataSync is focused on uniting best of breed business applications, and has already received positive support from industry.

Development velocity has increased significantly, and DataSync is on track to release the first “core services” component of DataSync Suite next month. The first supported applications in this integration feature will be SugarCRM and Zimbra. Both applications have show tremendous traction, and DataSync is excited to be a part of this growth.

As a part of DataSync’s overall strategy to integrate common business applications, our “release early, release often” development lifecycle will allow for early participation from the community. If you are a developer or have open source developers in your organization, we’d love your participation. Get in touch with our engineering team to find out more about how you can become a part of the DataSync open source integration movement.

SugarCRM and DataSync have implemented the open source software package for the largest free music festival in the nation – LifeLight. LifeLight brings over 300,000 people each year to a full 3 days of music and ministry.

We have spent the last few months building a dynamic web data management platform base on SugarCRM to manage all the data that 300,000 attendees generate. This has been a huge project for us, mostly due to the fact that we’re dealing with a highly dynamic, high growth organization that needs a lot of custom work.

DataSync has already built over 12 custom CRM modules to manage all the information LifeLight depends on. In addition, the entire infrastructure is linked to LifeLight’s website, allowing for interaction and e-commerce to integrate directly with SugarCRM.

For more information, see the LifeLight case study on DataSync’s website.

Today our recent Blackberry/Zimbra integration got picked up on CNET.com. We’re one of the first companies to offer Zimbra/BES integration, and the service is starting to get traction. Keep in mind that support is still in beta mode, however it’s a great solution that works well. We have many users already on the system with great results.

There’s a few quirks to work out yet, but Zimbra and RIM (Research in Motion – the company behind BlackBerry) are doing a great job on making the changes necessary to bring this integration into full production, hopefully in the near future.

If you’re interested in using your BlackBerry with Zimbra, check out our website for more details.

DataSync, Inc is launching a new open source application which will integrate many of the popular commercially used open source applications into one streamlined suite.

Currently there are many open source applications which are great options compared to their proprietary competitors, but since each open source project is maintained by largely a different set of developers with different goals in mind, these projects do not work well with one another causing un-necessary data re-entry, duplicated functionality, and un-necessary multiple-logons.

DataSync is hoping to change all of this by creating a open source integration application which will allow popular commercially-used open source products such as SugarCRM, Joomla, KnowledgeTree, Zimbra to work with one another. The initial version of the application which will be released in the next few weeks will feature a unified logon system which will allow users of each system to logon to all of them with one set of credentials.

Future versions which that will be developed by DataSync staff and the open source community will feature much greater integration between the five open source applications. A full roadmap of features pending in future versions is available on the community section of the DataSync website. The system will also be modular, so users will be able to install and leverage only the open source tools relevant to them.

DataSync’s business model will be very similar to that of what SugarCRM is currently doing by providing the software for free, but providing hosting and support for the application for a nominal fee. DataSync staff hopes to accelerate the development of this project by increased participation in the open source community and the designation of additional development hours on the project by DataSync staff.

DataSync is hoping to get this project off the ground and developed at a very accelerated rate. The initial release code will be provided to the OSS community in the next few weeks and a number of open source developers have already expressed interest in working on the project.

It’s been less than two weeks since Joomla’s developers announced that a stable version of Joomla 1.5 was available and the new version of this open source content management system has received glowing reviews from many web developers. We at DataSync are proud to announce that we are now offering hosting for Joomla 1.5.

Joomla 1.5 features a number of useful new features, such as on the fly preview, better menu management, a new media manager, a significantly improved extension manager, and new authentication methods. If you’re still using PostNuke, DotNetNuke, or PHPNuke, it’s time to consider switching. Joomla 1.5 has thousands of components and modules available, an amazing developer community, and is one of the best content management systems web developers have available.

If you’re interested in DataSync’s Joomla 1.5 hosting services, have a look at our Joomla Hosting Services or sign up for a free demo.

We are proud to announce that we now have full production SugarCRM 5.0 hosting, implementation, and support services, as well as upgrades from SugarCRM 4.5 to 5.0. SugarCRM 5.0 is the latest version of our partner’s ground-breaking software, and cements both DataSync and SugarCRM as a premier CRM solution for organizations around the globe.

Sugar’s landmark 5.0 release includes the “module builder”, a mechanism for building out custom modules that are fully integrated with the entire Sugar suite. DataSync already has experience building out custom modules and functionality using this tool. DataSync also offers module builder training for firms who are looking to implement SugarCRM internally.

We are really excited to find new ways to leverage the power of SugarCRM in a variety of industry verticals. We believe our prior experience combined with the best new tools will help us provide the best solutions on the market to our clients.

We are excited to announce that we are now the top-ranking KnowledgeTree hosting firm according to Google. The guys from KnowledgeTree have been great to work with, and we hope that our new ranking will help bring awareness to the open source community about the option of hosting software. We have found that SaaS (Software as a Service) is a powerful means to allow even the smallest businesses to take advantage of open source, without having to expensive consultants and additional IT resources.

I’d like to thank KnowledgeTree as well for their contribution to the community and building awareness about open source document management.

DataSync is proud to announce Dr. Aelred J. Kurtenbach’s participation in our Board of Advisers. Al co-founded Daktronics, Inc. in 1968 and now serves as Chairman of the Board for Daktronics. Al provides insight into our day to day operations, overall planning, and most of all our vision. We are honored to have Mr. Kurtenbach on our board, and look forward to his insight in the future.

To find out more about or board and leadership, check out our corporate website.