Talend Says Its Open Source Approach for Integration Tools Has Been Validated

October 21, 2008 Alex Woodie

When Talend added i OS support to its suite of open source data integration tools a year ago, the company faced doubts whether the open source model could work for enterprise data integration tools, a market dominated by the likes of IBM, Informatica, and SAP. If the number of downloads, customers, and partnerships in the last year is any indication–and Talend says it is–then the model definitely works.

Talend launched its flagship Talend Open Studio product about two years ago to capitalize on the demand for competitively priced data integration tools. The primary use of the software, which is based on the Eclipse framework, is to move and integrate disparate sources of data. Talend offers two main versions of the product, including a free and open source basic version that includes ETL and ELT capabilities, database and application connectors, workflow modeling, data mapping, a job modeler, and a metadata manager; and a for-fee product, called the Talend Integration Suite, which adds professional support and other features that appeal to larger organizations.

Interest in the Talend Open Studio has blossomed in the last year, according to Talend. The company says the number of downloads has more than tripled in the last year, to 500,000 core product downloads. The number of participants on the Talendforge.com Web site has quadrupled from about 500 individuals last year to more than 2,200 active participants. What’s more, the company has brought in more than 200 new, paying customers since the start of the year, including Yahoo, US Cellular, SwissLife, Levolor, and Car & Boat Media, among others.

Talend has also piqued the interest of the System i midrange community. In addition to supporting DB2/400 as a source and target of its data integration capabilities, the product has been incorporated into a larger bundle targeting System i shops in need of business intelligence capabilities. The Smart i appliance combines Talend Open Studio, IBM‘s DB2 Web Query for i software, an entry-level Power Systems server, and implementation services, and is being offered by two Southern California business partners, Key Information Systems and Systech USA. For more information, see “A Bumblebee for BI–Now That’s Just ‘Smart'”.

“We couldn’t be more proud of the great strides Talend has made in making enterprise-class data integration affordable to organizations of all sizes,” says Bertrand Diard, Talend’s co-founder and CEO. He says that in the coming months, “We’re planning to increase our quarter-on-quarter revenues by 50 percent or more, double the number of company employees, and continue our geographical expansion with a focus on Latin America and Northern Europe.”

Last week, Talend launched Talend Open Studio version 3.0. Developers interested in trying out the new release can download it at www.talend.com.