Given time and the efforts of some very bright and altruistic people, an open source solution can be highly competitive. The good news for Sugar and its customers is that they have been down the curve with their open source solution. As open source rises in prominence, established players face painful changes, but for new entrants like Sugar, there is little or no transition.
SugarCon, the SugarCRM user meeting held in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, did some important things for Sugar. It was a coming out party of sorts for a company with a distinct business model and strategy 
, namely open source. It was also validation of that strategy and, for many, a new realization of what open source means.