Talend had a booth at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco this week. As we recently launched the Java language generation feature in Talend Open Studio, it was interesting to see the reaction of the attendees to this capability.
But first, a couple general comments about this conference. It was a very interesting mix of technologies that were presented - ranging from enterprise software (data integration of course, but also BI, ERP, CRM, databases, application servers, etc.) all the way to consumer electronics (such Java-enabled phones, and even a 2-feet-high robot you could program in Java!) It was also a pretty impressive crowd, with both the North and South Halls of the Moscone Center being used, and people wearing JavaOne badges being seen everywhere in the neighborhood. A number of billboards in the Bay Area made it a very visible conference.
What really struck me on the enterprise software side is not how widely adopted Java has become (that’s a given nowadays), but more how open source is playing more and more of a role in the Java community. With Java itself having become open source, more and more enterprises are logically turning to open source to build their infrastructure stack. We’ve spoken to many companies on our booth, and the vast majority were really interested in our story. A number of them are trying to replace some proprietary and overpriced ETL products they had bought years ago. But a lot had nothing but custom scripts, that have become too complex to operate and maintain properly.
Overall, a pretty interesting experience for us - and lots of good contacts.

Yves