Archive for September, 2010
I described in a post from June 2009 how Accenture created – in stealth mode – its Innovation Center for Open Source. Just last month, Accenture published the results of a survey – targeting 300 large organizations in both the private and public sector of three countries: USA, UK and Ireland – which resonated like thunder. These results illustrate again the rise of open source software in the enterprise market.
According to Accenture’s survey, “69% of organizations anticipate increased investment in 2010, with more than a third (38 percent) expecting to migrate mission-critical software to open source in the next twelve months“. This follows the statement that “half of the respondents (50 percent) are fully committed to open source in their business while almost a third (28 percent) say they are experimenting with open source and keeping an open mind to using it“.
Furthermore, “two-thirds of all respondents (65 percent) noted that they have a fully documented strategic approach for using open source in their business, while another third (32 percent) are developing a strategic plan“. Yes, this means that 97% of enterprises strategically adopted open source today. This is the new reality that we called for since the creation of Talend. And as Paul Daugherty, Accenture’s chief technology architect points out: “What we are seeing is the coming of age of open source“.
OK, this is not a great surprise for all the specialists of the market. The evolution of adoption has been overwhelming for the past 2 years. But there is also a shift in the way enterprises are selecting open source solutions: “Through both our research and our work with clients, we are seeing an increase in demand for open source based on quality, reliability and speed, not just cost savings. This is a significant change from just two years ago when uptake was driven mainly by cost savings. We can expect to see this trend develop as open source continues to evolve and address even more business critical functions” continues Daugherty.
While the first benefit has always turned around cost saving, quality is now the main argument in favor of OSS: “76 percent of respondents in the UK and US cited quality as a key benefit of open source“. And this is great news for all the technological actors like Talend, who strive to prove that if cost reduction is of course important for enterprises, it doesn’t serve their interest if its performance are not in line with their objectives. I clearly remember this saying: “Cheap costs a lot“, translating the fact that if a cheap product does not work, you’ll have to pay more to buy another one! With open source, you get both: quality and cost reduction.
Another data point attracted my attention in this survey: “Despite a very encouraging picture, some organizations still remain hesitant (…) Lack of senior management support appears to be a key reason given for not using open source software among organizations that have looked at it but ultimately chosen not to use it“. This is clearly a central theme of our future go to market strategy. We know that technology experts are bold but their management is sometimes reluctant for various reasons. It is our role to give them insight that proves that the benefits of open source are real. For example, sharing the great data of this Accenture survey…
Bertrand
Summer generally tends to be a season for reflection. It is crucial for an entrepreneur, after a busy year devoted to business, the organization of their activities and of course raising financing, to gain some perspective in order to look ahead into the future. This year, it seems that this period was as essential as ever. Talend, as we published in July, “has surpassed virtually every goal we set for the first half of 2010 in sales, product development, customer service and support and business development.”
Our customer base has grown by 50% to over 1,500 customers, Total downloads reached 10 million, and last, but certainly not least, we released Talend 4.0, the first integrated data management platform combining Data Integration, Data Quality and Master Data Management (MDM) in a single solution.
So, what will be the next step for Talend? I strongly encourage you to read the interview with Thomas Tuchscherer, Talend’s VP of Corporate Development, which was just published in the Talend newsletter. He offers some interesting input on our development plans, both in terms of geographical and product development.
Additionally, as you may have read, we actively strengthened our management team through the recruitment of our new CFO, Nick White, after welcoming Thomas at the beginning of the year to drive Talend development.
In a more general context, I recently found a very interesting article from The Economist that I wanted to share with you entitled, Untangling the social web. It seems that with regard to business marketing, the next big thing will be analyzing the social web. Marketing experts are carefully looking at social networks, like Facebook and Twitter, to identify a new type of individual that they call “influencers”. The telecom industry is generally at the forefront of marketing innovations and the article outlines how Bharti Airtel, the largest mobile service provider in India, is reducing churn rate and enhancing the loyalty of its 135 million clients by using software that analyzes the social web. Another example was given by Le Grand BI, describing how Marriott (revenue of $11 billion with 137,000 employees) is using text mining software from SAS Institute to keep an eye on its e-reputation. The same blog (sorry it’s in French) published an interview with Jim Goodnight of SAS Institute in an article entitled, Analytics is the Next Big Thing.
After a period of weak interest, which then evolved into alarm, it seems that social networks have really entered the business ecosystem, proving to be of real interest in brand management. Who would have believed it 5 years ago? It’s a little like Talend’s evolution: apart from only a few visionaries, no one could predict our explosive growth. A little like open source development…
Some advice: keep your eyes and ears open!
Bertrand
Marketing open source solutions presents different challenges than traditional software. The fact that in many cases these tools “sell” themselves certainly helps! Yes, the most frequently cited reason for the popularity of open source is the TCO, but running a close second is that open source solutions compare favorably with proprietary tools in functionality, performance, and reliability. And indeed – a product that doesn’t work is truly false economy!
Open source: a better cost of doing business
To get started using open source technologies, users only need download the product over the Internet. They don’t need to negotiate with a vendor, sign a contract, or put a hard-stop on the time they have for testing the product. And, because there are no up-front costs and no licensing fees, they don’t necessarily need buy-in from management or an earmarked budget.
When it comes to adopting the enterprise version – which is usually sold as a subscription – open source provides a stable and predictable pricing model. For example, in the data integration field, proprietary vendors levy a “data tax” which increases the cost of processing additional data – adding servers, data sources/targets, or even transitioning to multi-core CPUs requires the purchase of additional licenses. These infrastructure costs aren’t predictable and may lead to rude surprises because companies can’t determine when they will reach their limits.
With Talend, the cost of the solution is based on the number of developers of data integration processes. Users can access new data as needed – for example, when setting up a new application or acquiring a new business, operations sometimes hard to predict in advance – they don’t need to buy additional licenses.
Let the product fit the project
To see if a product is a good fit for a project, just download it and use it. If you need assistance, the open source community and its vast resources are at your fingertips. You’ll also get free product upgrades as they become available simply by downloading new versions. No face time with the vendor and no time wasted on administrative tasks.
Before going ahead with the technology, you’ll know exactly what you’re getting; there are none of the unpleasant surprises that abound in the proprietary world. Open source means complete transparency.
Open source also makes it easy for a product or a technology to disseminate in the enterprise, because open source isn’t constrained to a given project, a given feature, or a given functional parameter. Open source is very adaptable. Typically, customers choose it for one type of project and quickly realize that they have other projects that would benefit from the same technology. Because there are no budgetary constraints or license fees, open source expands very easily to other parts of the enterprise.
Marketing open source today
Like many of my colleagues in open source marketing, I discovered open source three years ago, when I joined Talend. I came with an extensive high-tech marketing background, but had to learn the ropes of this new trade. Marketing open source technologies is exciting, and always changing. We have to fight pre-conceived ideas, FUD (Fear Uncertainty & Doubt) spread by proprietary vendors – who often know better, but pretend not to – hard core conservatism from an (always shrinking) part of the ecosystem, etc.
But maybe the most important aspect of the job is that we help make change happen. Open source is the future of IT. Welcome to the future!
Yves
PS: Recommended reading: IDC White Paper – Talend Uses Open Source to Deliver Low-Cost, Easy-to-Use Enterprise Data Integration
Note: the original version of this post appeared in Talend’s Newsletter #16 – September 2009
Talend has partnered with two French start-ups – Araok, an e-commerce consulting company and Nexedi, the vendor of the open source ERP solution ERP5 – to create a platform for providing data. Data Publica, which was officially launched today, aspires to offer the first marketplace dedicated to the distribution of all types of data, whether public or not. Its objective is to facilitate exchanges between publishers of data and Internet or mobile application developers.
Originally developed to create a French public data directory, the platform has been gradually extended to the free or paying distribution of all types of data. For each data set, Data Publica provides a description, metadata, the name of its publisher and the legal conditions under which it is available. In practice, the platform stores and indexes related data and metadata to facilitate searches. In addition, automatic updates are made periodically to add significance to the data (for example, data on car traffic, with a file per hour to describe the progress of this traffic). Today, Data Publica offers approximately 1,500 sets of data produced by sixty publishers.
The Data Publica project is partially funded by the Directorate General of Competitiveness, Industry and Service (DGCIS), following a call for projects launched by the French government agency responsible for the Strategic Planning and Development of the Digital Economy. Approved by the Free Software Thematic Group of the Systematic Competition Department, it also fits into the work of Initiative Services Mobile [Mobile Services Initiative] (www.intiative-services-mobiles.org), an operation that supports the development of mobile applications.
In addition to the Nexedi technology, the platform leverages Talend’s data and metadata management tools. While Talend’s data integration technologies enable data movement and transformations, Talend MDM is used to manage data repositories and approval workflows. Today, we are very proud to demonstrate in practice that our tools meet these user needs, while offering top-quality performance.
Indeed, Data Publica serves two distinct targets: publishers (meaning any company, institution or other entity that possesses data of general interest: traffic, weather, marriage announcements/births/deaths, demographic studies, etc.) seeking to develop their data, and developers wishing to integrate data to their applications. The platform also supplies various license texts that can be adopted to distribute data or applications to help these two target groups choose the method of distribution that best suits their purpose.
We are particularly pleased to participate in this type of project which democratizes access to a lot of data, while encouraging the development of Internet and mobile applications. We are also part of a wider movement (“Open Data”), affecting all industrialized countries and aiming for more transparency through better access to data.
Moreover, the success of Data Publica is such that two heavyweight players are joining us in the project: Inria (National Institute of Research in Computer Science and Control) will contribute its Semantic Web, database and search engine knowledge. For its part, Atos Origin will provide its high-tech transactional services expertise through Atos Worldline, its expertise center.
Finally, I would like to thank our CTO, Cédric, for his involvement with this project. I know he was especially interested in its success – well done, Cédric!
Stay tuned, I will keep you posted on the developments of this project.
Bertrand
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