SugarCRM product management team is busy catching up with recent industry trends. We have seen strong interest in cloud computing initiatives, along with massive buzz around micro-blogging tools like Twitter and Yammer.

Not to be left behind, SugarCRM has come out with feature rich version to capitalize on these trends. From Readme notes:

• Connectors to External Data Sources
  Sugar provides a connector to LinkedIn. Additional connectors to other data sources can be obtained and installed using Module Loader.
• Sugar Feed
  Sugar Feed enables users to be informed as soon as a user creates a new contact, lead, opportunity, or case. Users can add a My Sugar Feed Dashlet on their Home page so that when a user performs any of these actions, a message displays in the Dashlet on their Home page. Users can also be notified when a lead is converted, when a case is closed, and when an opportunity is closed.
  Additionally, users can post status updates, external links, images, and YouTube videos for other users to view within the Dashlet.
• My Portal Dashlet
  Sugar provides a My Portal Dashlet that presents product information and news about SugarCRM on your Home page. You can add additional My Portal dashlets to view information from external web sites and applications directly within your Sugar instance.

OpenAppDotOrg team will digging deeper into these modules. Let us know how imaginative you want to get with cloud connectors. Some users we discussed this are pretty excited about cloud connectors. There were muted concerns around security and performance but I am sure those will be taken care of eventually.

Are you ready for 5.2.0 GA? Download from SugarForge.  Also check out release notes. Let us know all the pros and cons of upgrade exercise.