Published at LXer:

Sterling PCU sells refrigerant systems to the automotive and appliance industry. It names among its customers Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, General Electric, and many others. Sterling had an extensive collection of customer information, but much of the data was stored in disparate locations: email, spreadsheets, and incompatible databases. When Sterling decided it was time to consolidate, its first choice was Salesforce's customer relationship management (CRM) product. However, high costs and restricted access to the company's own data forced a reassessment, and this time, Sterling chose an open source product.

Read More...