Talend
Analysis of Talend and its open source data integration products. Related subjects include:
Data integration as a business opportunity
A significant fraction of IT professional services industry revenue comes from data integration. But as a software business, data integration has been more problematic. Informatica, the largest independent data integration software vendor, does $1 billion in revenue. INFA’s enterprise value (market capitalization after adjusting for cash and debt) is $3 billion, which puts it way short of other category leaders such as VMware, and even sits behind Tableau.* When I talk with data integration startups, I ask questions such as “What fraction of Informatica’s revenue are you shooting for?” and, as a follow-up, “Why would that be grounds for excitement?”
*If you believe that Splunk is a data integration company, that changes these observations only a little.
On the other hand, several successful software categories have, at particular points in their history, been focused on data integration. One of the major benefits of 1990s business intelligence was “Combines data from multiple sources on the same screen” and, in some cases, even “Joins data from multiple sources in a single view”. The last few years before application servers were commoditized, data integration was one of their chief benefits. Data warehousing and Hadoop both of course have a “collect all your data in one place” part to their stories — which I call data mustering — and Hadoop is a data transformation tool as well.
Database diversity revisited
From time to time, I try to step back and build a little taxonomy for the variety in database technology. One effort was 4 1/2 years ago, in a pre-planned exchange with Mike Stonebraker (his side, alas, has since been taken down). A year ago I spelled out eight kinds of analytic database.
The angle I’ll take this time is to say that every sufficiently large enterprise needs to be cognizant of at least 7 kinds of database challenge. General notes on that include:
- I’m using the weasel words “database challenge” to evade questions as to what is or isn’t exactly a DBMS.
- One “challenge” can call for multiple products and technologies even within a single enterprise, let alone at different ones. For example, in this post the “eight kinds of analytic database” are reduced to just a single category.
- Even so, one product or technology may be well-suited to address a couple different kinds of challenges.
The Big Seven database challenges that almost any enterprise faces are: Read more
Intelligent Enterprise’s Editors’/Editor’s Choice list for 2010
As he has before, Intelligent Enterprise Editor Doug Henschen
- Personally selected annual lists of 12 “Most influential” companies and 36 “Companies to watch” in analytics- and database-related sectors.
- Made it clear that these are his personal selections.
- Nonetheless has called it an Editors’ Choice list, rather than Editor’s Choice. 🙂
(Actually, he’s really called it an “award.”)
Partial overview of Ab Initio Software
Ab Initio is an absurdly secretive company, as per a couple of prior posts and the comment threads on same. But yesterday at TDWI I actually found civil people staffing an Ab Initio trade show booth. Based on that conversation and other tidbits, I think it’s fairly safe to say: Read more
| Categories: Ab Initio Software, Analytic technologies, Benchmarks and POCs, Data integration and middleware, EAI, EII, ETL, ELT, ETLT, Expressor, Pricing, Talend | 14 Comments |
Talend update
I chatted yesterday at TDWI with Yves de Montcheuil of Talend, as a follow-up to some chats at Teradata Partners in October. This time around I got more metrics, including:
- Talend revenue grew 6-fold in 2008.
- Talend revenue is expected to grow 3-fold in 2009.
- Talend had >400 paying customers at the end of 2008.
- Talend estimates it has >200,000 active users. This is based on who gets automated updates, looks at documentation, etc.
- ~1/3 of Talend’s revenue is from large customers. 2/3 is from the mid-market.
- Talend has had ~700,000 downloads of its core product, and >3.3 million downloads in all (including documentation, upgrades, etc.)
It seems that Talend’s revenue was somewhat shy of $10 million in 2008.
Specific large paying customers Yves mentioned include: Read more
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Data integration and middleware, EAI, EII, ETL, ELT, ETLT, eBay, Market share and customer counts, Specific users, Talend | 5 Comments |
Introduction to Talend
I didn’t spend much time on the show floor at Teradata Partners, but I did connect with Yves de Montcheuil of Talend for a couple of little chats. Highlights of the Talend story include: Read more