“Etelos, launched in pre-bubble 1999 as a CRM services outfit,
has remade itself as a Web 2.0 company with the help of open source
software. Today, Etelos offers hosted CRM applications that weave
into Google apps, Windows Live, and even iPods. Leaving Microsoft
behind, and all the licensing restrictions that came with it, made
all the difference, says CTO and founder Danny Kolke.“In May 1999 Kolke started Etelos with a vision to provide an
entire suite of Web applications for salespeople. Etelos started
life as a Microsoft shop, but it didn’t take long before Kolke
realized that fulfilling his vision was going to take an
infrastructure that would allow scalability at a lower cost than
was possible with the .Net platform that Etelos was based
on…”