Specialist in Open Source (O/S) data integration, Talend announced record revenues for 2009, more than doubling from 2008, growing its customers' base by 140% as well as doubling its staff, and expects the same to continue in 2010.

"2010 is set to be a pivotal year for Talend and will see accelerated deployment, continuous growth at the same rate as 2009 and innovation that will better and more completely serve the data management needs of our customers and users," said Bertand Diard, co-founder and CEO of Talend.

Interviewed by IT Europa, General Manager of Talend EMEA, François Méro explains: "Last year has been the year during which we've set up and created the business infrastructure to sustain the 2010 roll-out - meaning that 70% of the people on board in January this year weren't on board in January last year." Talend indeed started from scratch its operations in the UK, has trebled Germany, doubled France and more than doubled the USA.

"So the out-coming is an expansion year based on three main factors. The first and main driver is the expansion of our existing operations and the execution of our business process in the countries in which we are today," he explains, adding Talend would double its business in Europe in 2010.

Second driver is the expansion through the channel, as Talend is reinforcing its strategy directed to systems integrators and technology partners, some of them to become OEM partners. "So we're growing by our own forces, but also growing by additional forces thanks to systems integrators, resellers and OEMs," continues Méro.

And third, is the opening of new territories (such as in southern or eastern Europe) through distributors or master resellers. "With different culture and languages, it is not necessarily required that we open our own subsidiaries, but rather that we partner with local existing companies. This is the plan we're building this quarter and which will be executed next quarter, so I can already tell you we'll be announcing master resellers agreements in new countries starting in Q2."

Meanwhile, Talend has just announced a new partnership with French ISV specialised in workflows and BPM to provide vertical-oriented applications, mainly to SMEs. "Actually, they mostly chose us instead of us choosing them, as they started delivering projects with our community edition, Talend Open Studio, allowing its customers to easily interconnect their work with their existing systems. And they came to us asking if we could partner on the sales and marketing side."

Asked about the validity of the O/S model in the long-term, Méro answered the question was out-of-date. "The main reason why customers go to us is not because we're cheaper but because we have a solution that can solve their problem. Then they find a fairer deal with the O/S pricing model, which gives them more flexibility and predictability."

So in terms of countries or industries, "The key benefits Talend provides are the same; the market is generic when it comes to delivering data." Countries contributing the most to Talend's growth are those who started the earliest, so France contributes more than Germany, which contributes more than the UK.

But "Now we operate on a global scale and we moved from the data integration niche (still a $15bn market) to a complete solution offering company also delivering data quality and master data management (MDM), we're better positioned to replace the big players with expensive solutions," he concludes.

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