We announced yesterday a new OEM partnership with open source geospatial vendor and integrator Camptocamp. This partnership is significant for Talend, for several reasons:
- Camptocamp is a reference member of the geospatial community, and up until now there was no open source spatial ETL - the market was dominated by a proprietary vendor. Spatial Data Integrator - a Camptocamp product, Powered by Talend - is in a unique position to quickly gain market share.
- It also proves Talend’s ability to go beyond the conventional data integration market - the one where we work with plain old data from databases, files, ERP, CRM, LDAP directories, you name it. The geospatial domain works with very specialized data structures, and addresses very specific needs. The unique versatility of Talend Open Studio made it easy for Camptocamp to augment its capabilities with geospatial components. And beyond geospatial, there are a wealth of other specialized areas in which Talend can get involved.
- The geospatial domain is very sensitive to open source, as proven by the 1,300 people who made it all the way to Victoria, BC this week for the FOSS4G conference where we are exhibiting and announcing the partnership. I am telling you, Victoria is beautiful (so are saying the people who went beyond the airport/hotel/convention center), but it’s pretty far away from many places…
I am sure this launch is the start of a very successful relationship, both for Camptocamp and Talend.
Yves
Two recent pieces: Open Source Software and the Curse of Plenty by Pete Loshin and The curse of plenty: what El Mariachi tells us about writing software by Neil Davidson use an apparently unrelated example to discuss software development. They explain how the movie “El Mariachi” en 1992 did cost only $7,000, whereas the average budget of movies at that time was roughly $50 million! The producer explained his success in terse words: “Refuse to spend. Think of a creative way to get around your problem.” If you are interested in his recipes, you can check out The Internet Movie Database.
According to Pete and Neil, This success teaches us several lessons that can be applied to software development. If there is one that I think should be remembered however, it’s this one: the more budget, the less creativity. Even if the open source software industry is not only linked to monetary issues, funding is essential. This explains for example why non-profit or government agencies, which have tight budget restrictions, have long been interested in our technologies.
We all know this motto “do more with less” with haunts the minds of CIO the world over! Open source solutions address especially well this demand: not only do they reduce costs by “freeing” the source code of the software and providing it without license charges, but they also offer higher quality levels. Indeed, their purpose is to satisfy customers, whereas others seek to shackle them!
History of art offers many examples that prove that with a little imagination and lots of creativity, one does not need to invest massively in technology to reach an innovative and satisfactory result. Let’s apply this principle to IT also. Aren’t we talking about the “art of programming”?
Bertrand
In their September issue, Programmez!, the leading French publication for software developers, listed 100 tools - commercial or open source, well known or lesser known, in many different domains. These 100 tools constitute the must-have for developers.
According to Programmez!, “Talend Open Studio improves integration of enterprise data in an innovative way. The graphical approach is efficient and allows to successfully perform the data consolidation or migration tasks that are encountered in business intelligence or information system redesign projects.”
Thanks to the editorial staff at Programmez! for this recognition!
Yves
I got this anecdote first hand from a consultant who was working for Aerospace Maintenance when it happened (not the real company name, for liability issues).
Aerospace Maintenance decided to leverage a software solution called Avexus for its MRO (Maintenance Repair & Overhaul) application. Avexus was the leading commercial solution for MRO. Its vendor was offering the solution in ASP mode, which allowed Aerospace Maintenance not to worry about deployment, RDBMS maintenance, etc. The project, initiated in 2006, was deployed quickly and users were generally happy, although some last minute glitches created usage issues.
On October 16, Avexus’ web site vanished. On October 18, after unsuccessful attempts to contact Avexus, a visit to their San Diego offices found only vacant space. Aerospace Maintenance’s CIO reacted immediately, contacted the servers hosting provider and paid 3 months of hosting fees to keep the application running. He missioned a developer to recover sources and to ghost the server.
A few days later, Avexus’ web site was still down, and no information was available from any source until a press release was issued by an Indian company which announced they have acquired the IP assets (and only the IP assets) of Avexus. Aerospace Maintenance contacted this company, and was offered to re-pay for the sofware…
The sources recovered by Aerospace Maintenance were not up to date and could not be used.
Very few publicity was given to this story, because aerospace MRO companies could see their certification suspended should the FAA or the JAA found out that they had no control over such mission critical systems.
Scary, isn’t it? What if Avexus had been open source? Could this have happened? Maybe. With the same consequences for the users? Clearly not.
Yves
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