Last week, for the third year in a row, Gartner rated Talend a Visionary in their Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools. You can get a free copy here, courtesy of Talend (registration required).
Time for a little reflection on these past 3 quadrants, and the one before…
- 2008: Disappointment. Readers of this blog and observers of the analyst relations world will remember my lashing at Gartner for
ignoringnot acknowledging the disruptive force of open source. Lots of interesting reactions (Wait, a vendor criticizing the Gartner process? — Whoa, these guys need to be taught proper AR. — Boy, are they toast forever!)
A disappointment it was. We were set for changing forever the data integration landscape and Gartner did not see that. In retrospect, they probably saw it, but needed proof points. And truth be told, in 2008, we did not have many proof points. - 2009: We Made It! Not only did we make it to the MQ, but we made it as a visionary. The long and patient work of gathering the proper references, explaining our strategy to the analysts, and more importantly bringing them the proof points they needed, was finally paying off. Talend was the first open source vendor to enter the MQ (still is), the only new entrant, and came in a very strong position.
- 2010: Consolidating. The 2010 edition of the MQ came out right at the time where we were finalizing our acquisition of Sopera – too late to influence our position. Still, 2010 marked a significant jump in Ability to Execute, a further proof of Talend’s explosive growth.
- 2011: Flirting with the Leaders… The 2011 vintage of the MQ is an excellent one. Or maybe I should say MQs – plural. Talend is now also a Visionary in the Data Quality Magic Quadrant, and a Cool Vendor. And with another jump in Ability to Execute, Talend is now flirting with the leaders…
Get your copy of the MQ to view the positions, and to read the verbatim on Talend and on the other players. Lots of interesting stuff in there, as usual.
Yves
Just one thing I have to comment on here Yves — at the start of the blog post you say ” my lashing at Gartner for ignoring the disruptive force of open source. ” Ignoring is completely wrong. Just because a vendor (or type of vendor) is not on the MQ, does not mean we are ignoring it. The fact is that in 2008, Talend did not meet what we believe are very important inclusion criteria for the MQ — BOTH in terms of functional capabilities (some aspects of your functionality, such as specific metadata mgt features, data delivery styles, and specific levels of integration with data quality tools) that we believe are critical to our clients, as well as in market presence (revenues and number of subscription-paying customers) that also reflect expectations of our clients. We had been very well aware of and closely following Talend even before that time — so “ignoring” is complete inaccurate. Would appreciate you acknowledging that in your post. We may disagree on what is critical to the market, but we fairly research and gain understanding about capabilities and presence of all providers. Thanks!
Ted, my apologies if this came out wrong. I have replaced “ignoring” with “not acknowledging”. I never accused Gartner of being unfair, my grips at the time were that the inclusion criteria were simply too restrictive to accommodate “anomalies” like Talend.
When I say “In retrospect, they probably saw it, but needed proof points”, I think I am also acknowledging the fact that we were on your radar, but not with what you needed to meet the said criteria.
Sigh. Vendors of a particular type being absent from the MQ does not mean we do “not acknowledge” a trend. Note that in 2007 and 2008 we wrote about the trend of open-source in this market in at least 4 or 5 published documents for our clients. Within these we made statements such as “By 2011, open-source data integration tools will begin to reach a level of functional parity with contemporary commercial products.” Pretty clearly acknowledging the impact of this trend. And guess what? Here we are in 2011, and as you pointed out in your post, Talend has made good progress as reflected on the MQ.