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Crust Releases version 2020.06 and Removes Paywall for All Products

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Cork, Ireland, 30 June 2020

Crust Technology is excited to announce its latest major release, version 2020.06. Along with significant feature and functionality upgrades, Crust is also delighted to announce the removal of the paywall for all products in its portfolio. This means that the open-source Crust products are now free:

“We’re thrilled with the latest features improvements and the expression of commercial confidence to remove the paywall on our product portfolio” says Niall McCarthy, CEO of Crust Technology. “Crust is growing quickly and, with much innovation to come in 2020 and beyond, we’re proving we can adapt to fast-changing market realities effectively and aggressively”.

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Crust is Spreading its Wings

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Since we launched in March 2019, Crust CRM Suite has established itself as the de facto open-source alternative to Salesforce. Self-funded, profitable in our first year of trading and equipped with an order book delivering over a year’s worth of cash runway, Crust Technology is already on target to grow between 200% and 300% in its second year. Corteza, the community project founded when Crust contributed its entire code base to the Commons Conservancy in June 2019, has gone from strength to strength, garnering many thousands of users in its first year. Its goal to become “The Digital Work Platform for Humanity” is gaining momentum.

These are big statements and we count ourselves lucky, given the economic mayhem and misfortune that has afflicted so many to date in 2020. Keeping our commercial focus and development on track and on budget has been a tough but welcome challenge to date and our next steps will set the bar higher again. Read more

Why is Customer Relationship Management important?

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The 3 main reasons why Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is important are:

  1. Up to date information
    Customer information is always up to date, and easily accessible to all authorised staff.
  2. Automation
    Automation enables the streamlining of complex customer interaction processes, which saves time and reduces errors.
  3. Insights
    Finally, it provides businesses with reporting tools. Understand your customers better and detect where you can improve the sales team.

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What is BPMS?

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According to Wikipedia, “Business Process Management is a discipline in operations management in which people use various methods to discover, model, analyze, measure, improve, optimize and automate business processes.”

BPMS (Business Process Management Software or System) is a software platform for enabling BPM activities. Managing business processes is at the heart of your work, building a:

  • CRM Suite
  • applicative software
  • applications of IoT
  • tools for a digital transformation strategy

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How to set up an automated business

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As the economic squeeze continues, many businesses will be asking how automation can help them and their staff become more productive, focus their efforts on relationship building and service existing customers more effectively. Read more

What is an Open-Source Low-Code Platform?

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It’s a cliché to say by now, but the world has entered stormy economic waters. Spending on information technology is due to decrease for the foreseeable future. Being less expensive than traditional development and often delivering better results, the growth of Low-Code Platforms is about to accelerate even further. Planet Crust offers the premium free and open-source Low-Code Platform Corteza for building records-based management web applications.

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It’s time to turn the page on open source forks of SugarCRM

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It is a testament to SugarCRM that it spawned so many open source forks, before deciding to take itself down an exclusively closed-source, proprietary route. There seem to be dozens of them out there, each claiming to be unique while all working from the same core community edition engine, abandoned by Sugar CRM all those years ago. Read more

What is a Digital Transformation Strategy?

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I was recently asked this question and at the same time asked to explain what free CRMs have to do with the subject of digital transformation. Naturally, we here believe that Planet Crust’s CRM is the best free CRM on the market, providing the market-leading open source Salesforce alternative. However, more importantly, we provide a low code platform that rivals “Lightning”, the Salesforce rapid application development offering in every facet. CRM is just the tip of the iceberg – with the Corteza low code platform we can build just about any type of records-centric web applications. Read more

In celebrating “Digital Sovereignty”, we will be judged by the quality of the software we produce, not our fine words.

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Crust Technology recently had the pleasure of taking part in the Univention Summit in Bremen, Germany. The Univention Corporate Server (UCS) is a leading platform for cost-efficient operation and easy administration of server applications and entire IT infrastructures. It is both self-hosted and open source and is used by many recognisable, brand-name organisations. UCS is an excellent OS base upon which to build your Digital Sovereignty, being practical, feature complete and supportive of multi-vendor environments.

Digital Sovereignty is a complex term, implying unimpeded access to the software code (i.e. 100% open source), default support and promotion of federated architectures, control of data location and consistent cross-jurisdictional regulation. While vendors such Univention point the way at the infrastructural level, software manufacturers at the application layer must pick up the baton with equal enthusiasm and determination.

In practical terms, what might this mean for software application vendors?

  1. Be 100% open
    This means no tricks or games. Every line of code must be available to the using or hosting organisation. But it goes even further than that – application architectures must be clear, well-documented and not a source of data lock-in themselves.
  1. Easy E-Migration
    The cost of migrating away from a solution, self-hosted or otherwise, must be as low as possible. In other words, the software must be built with recognition of the principle that the using organisation has a fundamental and exclusive right to “own” all of their data and that, should they wish, this data can be moved away from the platform easily.
  2. Embrace Standards
    From security to communication to API’s, software must be standards-based and must, in so far as possible, facilitate federation with other software and services. Clouds should be capable of collaborating with eachother, irrespective of the language in which they are coded.
  3. User Experience (UX) must be excellent
    Good UX leads to strong adoption. Failing at this first hurdle is unforgiveable. It has now been proven umpteenth times that solutions with poor UX simply do not get adopted by a population of a meaningful size.

Credibility is key. Businesses and governments pushing for Digital Sovereignty must learn from history. It’s littered with defunct open source providers, who failed to deliver compelling alternatives to components of giant data-harvesting clouds and proprietary software manufacturers. To fail again would be to be laughed off the stage, while the use of data from our corporate champions, mittelstand (mid-sized economic actors) and small businesses drifts further and further from our control. The stakes are that high.

Do you want to take the first step to Digital Sovereignty? Give Univention’s UCS a try and set up Crust using their Univention App Center.

About Crust

Crust Technology Ltd, headquartered in Ireland, is the driving force behind the open-source Unified Work platform Crust, providing a flexible, self-hosted platform for your organisation to work and communicate internally while engaging with its customers, suppliers, partners and other third parties externally. Its integrated approach to identity, messaging and business logic delivers a simple-to-use yet extensible means for managing users and the applications they require every day, whether in the cloud, behind the firewall or a hybrid of the two. For more information, visit www.planetcrust.com or follow @Crusttech on Twitter.

DAASI International brings Crust to Univention Corporate Server

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Cork, 22 January 2020

We’re excited to announce that Crust, the open source Low Code, CRM and Service Automation platform is now available on the Univention Corporate Server (UCS) via the Univention App Center.

UCS, created by Univention, provides companies with a complete solution for the administration of IT infrastructures, applications, resources and users. With the addition of Crust in the Univention App Center, UCS users can easily add the entire Crust suite to their UCS instances. This includes:

Additionally, DAASI International, a German and European leader in Open Source Identity and Access Management has seamlessly integrated their didmos Single Sign-On offering with the advanced UCS Management system. DAASI International will be responsible for distributing the Crust platform on UCS and supporting all Crust customers.

“We are delighted to welcome the Crust platform to our App Center family” says Nico Gulden, Product Manager Apps at Univention. “We’re always on the look out for open source alternatives to major proprietary vendors that increase the options of choice for our users on their way to Digital Sovereignty.”

“As not just a partner of, but also an investor in Crust Technology, releasing the platform on Univention is a notable step for us” adds Peter Gietz, CEO of DAASI International. “It is becoming increasingly important that major applications treat the subject of identity as key to their success. Being available on UCS opens doors to markets that appreciate both customer and digital sovereignty by default.”

“Crust is very excited about this launch” says Niall McCarthy, CEO of Crust Technology. “Univention has been a leader in providing self-hosted technology in Germany and further afield for a number of years. A key strategic goal for Crust is to build and evolve to satisfy the growing and ever-more complex requirements of enterprise customers who demand feature sets which match traditional cloud providers while protecting their digital sovereignty.”

How to get Crust on Univention Corporate Server?

A free Crust trial can easily be installed via the Univention App Center inside UCS. If you don’t have UCS yet, you can visit https://www.univention.com/downloads/ to download it. A Crust subscription, starting at 24 euro per user per month (discounts are available), is needed after the free trial. For more information, please contact Crust at www.planetcrust.com/contact

About Crust

Crust Technology Ltd, headquartered in Ireland, is the driving force behind the open-source Unified Work platform Crust, providing a flexible, self-hosted platform for your organisation to work and communicate internally while engaging with its customers, suppliers, partners and other third parties externally. Its integrated approach to identity, messaging and business logic delivers a simple-to-use yet extensible means for managing users and the applications they require every day, whether in the cloud, behind the firewall or a hybrid of the two. For more information, visit www.planetcrust.com or follow @Crusttech on Twitter.

About DAASI International:

DAASI International is an expert in federated Identity and Access Management based on open source. Since its founding in 2000, the IT service provider from Tübingen, Germany deals with identity management, access control and directory service technologies for universities, public authorities and companies. In addition, DAASI International is actively involved in the field of Digital Humanities and participates in national and international research projects, including the digital research infrastructure DARIAH-DE. DAASI International’s range of services covers consulting, support, hosting, and software development.

About Univention:

Univention GmbH is a leading European manufacturer of open source products for the operation and management of IT infrastructure, headquartered in Bremen. Univention Corporate Server (UCS) can be used as a classic server solution in the cloud or in hybrid scenarios. UCS is an economical alternative to Microsoft server solutions and includes comprehensive Active Directory capabilities and an App Center that integrates and operates more than 90 enterprise solutions into existing IT environments.