Some will say “it’s about time”.  I won’t.  Although I’ll admit that I was impatient to see the Magic Quadrant for Data Integration been released.  It’s finally out, and well worth the wait.

But before getting into more details, I want to set some points straight.

Last year, I posted on this blog a comment on Gartner’s latest Magic Quadrant for Data Integration. This was perceived by some as a direct attack against Gartner analysts, an unprecedented action from a vendor according to an AR firm: Vendor complains in a very public blog post about Gartner’s Data Integration Magic Quadrant.  A lively discussion ensued, mostly with Gartner analyst Andreas Bitterer (Setting the Record Straight) and many other parties chimed in – analysts, vendors, etc.

I still stand behind what I said.  I feel that Talend’s instant traction a year ago should have been sufficient to get us in the Quadrant. Gartner’s policy is to look at previous years’ record. I disagree with this policy, but it’s clearly stated and applied fairly and objectively.  This is what’s important.

The second thing I feel I need to say, is that Talend is not a Gartner client.  I have seen many implications amounting to “you have to pay to be included”.  Well, I can affirm loud and clear that this is not true. At the time I write this post, Talend has never paid a penny to Gartner.  All this inclusion has cost us is time, convincing, sweat, stress – but it did not dent my marketing budget.

These past few months of interacting with Ted Friedman, Mark Beyer and Andy Bitterer have been very interesting.  The Magic Quadrant process is a well oiled mechanic, and the analysts are clear on what to expect.  Along the process, a few other research notes mentioning Talend have seen the light of day. One such report was on open source data quality, on which Jeff Kelly of SearchDataManagement.com has written, quoting Ted Friedman: “The most advanced of the open source vendors offering data quality tools is Talend”.  Another recent note by Gartner is titled “2009 Sees Increased Adoption of Open-Source Data Integration Tools” – but not been a Gartner client I don’t know precisely what it says.  I just know from gartner.com’s search engine that it mentions Talend.

Back to the new Magic Quadrant.  I got a courtesy copy from Gartner but obviously can’t and won’t share copyrighted material on this blog.  A few things which are important though:

• Talend is coming into the Quadrant as a Visionary.  In itself this is quite an accomplishment: many new entrants start as Niche Players and then slowly make their way to the right – if at all.  I’ll take that as a recognition that the commercial open source model enables a different delivery and development model.
• Talend is the only new entrant in the Quadrant this year, and obviously the only open source player in it.  Many vendors (proprietary or open source) have been trying to ride in the wake we created, as seen in numerous press releases and articles (“we are like Talend, except that…”).  They are not there yet.  Personally, I would love to see another open source player in the Quadrant, if only to reinforce the proof of the enterprise readiness of open source data integration.

What does that mean for Talend?  Is this a life-changing event?  I don’t believe so.  We acquired 800 enterprise customers, reached 5 million downloads, without this kind of coverage.  Still, is it going to help us in large enterprise accounts?  You bet it will.  Many CIOs, when they’ll get this report on their desk, will want to know more about us, and especially figure out how Talend can help them optimize their costs and increase flexibility.  We’ll be happy to tell them.  And to give them examples of how their peers have done it.  The same ones we presented to Gartner in the past year.  (Kind of chicken-egg story).

In any case, I am proud that Talend is joining the handful of open source companies recognized by Gartner in a Magic Quadrant.  Others who made it include Alfresco (Enterprise Content Management), Drupal, Liferay & MindTouch (Social Software in the Workplace), GroundWork (Network Management), MySQL (DBMS).  And I would be surprised if our friends at Jaspersoft and Pentaho did not make the next BI Quadrant.  They certainly deserve it and have the track record.

And, as Matt Asay recently wrote, maybe it’s time to upgrade open source perceptions of Gartner…

Yves

** UPDATE Dec 1, 2009 **
You can now view the full Magic Quadrant report, courtesy of Talend, by clicking here.