On 451 Group’s CAOS Theory blog, Matthew Aslett announced that venture investment in open source technologies has reached an all-time high for investments in the first quarter of 2008. According to 451 Group, these investments reached over $200 million, beating the previous record ($193 million in the fourth quarter of 2006). About 20 deals were closed last quarter, against 17 in the last quarter of 2006, and the average was $12 million a piece.
This is great news, given the “low” level of investments in 2007. 451’s projections are excellent for the entire year and even if they don’t reach 2006’s all time high, they will be higher than in 2007. Venture funding is critical for open source vendors and helps them start operations, and spread the word through marketing!
As a conclusion, I would like to remind you that Gartner recently announced that by 2012, 90% of organizations in the world will use open source technologies either directly or embedded (0.0 to 1.0 probability).
Bertrand
As a further proof of the maturity of the open source market, the OSA (Open Solutions Alliance) has recently celebrated its first anniversary. As a reminder, the OSA is a consortium of open source software vendors dedicated to making enterprise-class open software solutions work together. It helps customers put open solutions to work by enabling application integration, certifying quality solutions, and promoting cooperation among open solutions developers. Officially created one year, the OSA has just held a new board election and has also announced earlier this year its European chapter. This European chapter has itself chosen a temporary board of directors, whose first mission will be to select where the organization will be incorporated. I am proud to say that Talend’s General Manager for EMEA, François, will be sitting on this board.
Six directions have been decided for the European OSA for this year:
- Promoting and defending interoperability
- Developing an ecosystem through the recruitment of vendors, SIs and ISVs
- Marketing and business development for and around the EOSA members
- Developing relationships with the open source community
- International exchanges and relationships with the other OSA chapters
- Promoting and defending open source in Europe
As explained by Dominic Sartorio, the OSA President, the first year of such a consortium usually carries high risks that can put in question its existence. The OSA has brilliantly worked around all obstacles and starts its second year, leveraging a growing members number (22 to date). Dominic’s article that presents this first year from the insider’s perspective calls for even more collaboration between organizations.
I have no doubt that even more of us will celebrate the OSA’s second anniversary next year.
Bertrand
An excellent online community went live recently, dedicated to data migration. Dylan Jones is the founder of DataMigrationPro.com and he did a great job at federating a number of useful resources for data migration professionals. Of course, since Talend’s solutions are widely used for data migration, Talend is proud to be a member of the community.
Actually, Fabrice (Talend’s COO and cofounder) was recently interviewed by Dylan. Fabrice talked about his background, Talend’s background, and why open source is the best option for data migration.
Yves
We just announced the winners and finalists of the Talend Awards. All my apologies for being late - we had originally said we would announce the results in February. But at the request of many users, we extended the submission deadline by two weeks. And then it simply took us some time to get our winners’ corporate communications departments to approve (or, in one case, to not approve) the use of their names. I’ll keep that in mind for the next edition.
In the “Best Technical Use” category, the winner is… The Corporation of the City of Brantford in Ontario, Canada. We also had two finalists with excellent projects: Austrian University UMIT-biomed and Hungarian consulting firm Koolin.
In the “Best Return on Investment/Best Business Gain” category, the winner is… a major global automotive manufacturer. Finalists included bio analysis firm Eurofins, dual-headquartered in France and Germany, and Groupe CPI in France.
OK, so what’s the deal with the automotive manufacturer? Well, after we notified him that he was the winner, our champion there, Joe (that’s his real name), asked his corporate communications department to validate a quote he wanted to give us for the press release. And to his surprise they said “no way”. Apparently these guys are so protective of their brand that even the architect who built their HQ can’t list them as a client! Joe was very fair play and offered to withdraw his entry, but we decided he would keep his prize and title: his project is still very good, and it’s not his fault.
For more info on the winning projects, please read the press release. I’ll be posting here more details on each winner and finalist over the next few weeks.
Thanks again to all participants to the first edition of the Talend Awards!
Yves
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