Network World constantly monitors the market for the next great innovation in networking - and as they said in a summary dating from last April, “there’s no better place to look than to the most innovative start-ups in the business.”

Today, Jon Brodkin published the annual roundup of open source companies to watch. And I am proud to say that Talend made the cut - it’s been recognized as one of the eight most innovative start-ups in open source (since the companies are listed in alphabetical order, you have to jump to page 7 of the article to find Talend). Actually, two data integration companies are in the list, which shows how hot this space is today (the other one, Apatar, integrates Web 2.0 applications - I can’t help but find it interesting that, from its founder’s own admission, the reason it’s called Apatar is that it would put it at the top of the alphabet, thus get it more often than not in the first position in alphabetical listings!).

Anyway, after receiving the Horizon Award earlier this week, that’s another nice recognition of Talend’s innovative positioning, and of the clear demand for open source data integration out there.

Yves