Fresh from setting up a European office in Dublin, SugarCRM has released Sugar Projects, a project planning addition to its customer relationship management (CRM) system.

Sugar Projects offers the ability to share SugarCRM files, notes, and benchmarks as well as providing planning grids, project templates, Gantt charts and dashboards.

The software will be available for both on-demand and on-site deployment, carrying a price premium starting at $40 per user per month.

Sugar cited Nucleus Research market analysis suggesting 32 percent of on-demand customers are currently using CRM and 23 percent are using project management tools. But the numbers flip when firms are asked about buying intentions for the next 12 to 18 months, with 29 percent of companies planning to buy project management and 16 percent planning to buy CRM.

A poll at a Salesforce.com conference in London yesterday also suggested that project management is a prime candidate for adoption by on-demand customers.