Open Source Data Integration

26 January 2009, 4:25pm

TALEND SECURES $12 MILLION IN FUNDING TO FUEL CONTINUED WORLDWIDE GROWTH AND MOMENTUM

Balderton Capital and AGF Private Equity Lead Series C Round of Investment in Open Source Data Integration Leader

Talend, the first provider of open source data integration software, today announced it has secured $12 million in Series C financing to help fuel further worldwide growth and company expansion. The funding round is being led by Balderton Capital, an early investor in MySQL, and existing investor AGF Private Equity bringing Talend’s total funding to more than $20 million. Balderton General Partner Bernard Liautaud, the founder, CEO and Chairman of Business Objects for 18 years up until its eventual sale to SAP for $6.7 billion, will join Talend’s board of directors.

During 2008, Talend moved from being a disruptive innovator to an open source data integration leader. The popularity of Talend Open Studio, the Company’s flagship open source data integration solution, has risen sharply since its introduction more than two years ago with more than 3.3 million lifetime downloads. In the past twelve months alone, Talend’s paying customer base increased by more than 300 percent, steadily taking market share away from proprietary data integration tools such as Informatica PowerCenter or IBM WebSphere DataStage, and confirming the suitability and scalability of its solutions for enterprise projects of large and well-known companies.

"The ability to raise a new round of financing during the current economic environment reinforces our general belief that Talend is poised to maximise its potential," said Bertrand Diard, co-founder and CEO of Talend. "Enterprises large and small are searching for ways to optimise costs and increase value without sacrificing the performance, functionality and benefits of their data integration deployments. Talend has become the target of that search, joining the likes of Red Hat, JBoss and MySQL in changing the economics of a long-standing software category to become a global power in data integration. With worldwide economy favoring companies that bring feature-rich software solutions to market at an optimal cost of ownership, we expect to continue our momentum in 2009 and beyond."

“AGF Private Equity was an early backer of Talend, and we are proud to affirm our support to the company and its team,” said Matthieu Baret, Partner with AGF Private Equity. “Talend has experienced tremendous momentum in US and Europe over the past two years. With the addition of today’s announced funding, Talend is poised to further expand globally, extending its offering and its position as a leading provider of open source infrastructure software for enterprises.”

“Today's information systems rely on a mix of open source and traditional technologies,” said Mr Liautaud. “Open source has proven its maturity, and its ability to handle even the most complex needs of enterprises, while seamlessly working alongside established solutions. Talend has proven that open source in particular is especially suited for operational data integration. I am proud to be associated with a category leader and to help IT organisations in companies of all sizes unlock their data assets.”

"This is a difficult economic environment to raise capital in the software industry," said Raven Zachary, contributing analyst at The 451 Group, an independent technology-industry analyst company. "Data integration is a natural fit for open source as an enabling set of technology for enterprise development. Companies like Talend are able to effectively pair the strengths of open source with a commercial services offering aimed at the enterprise."

Leveraging the additional funding, Talend will expand global operations into key markets in the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific, targeting large enterprises and partners that are looking at cost-effective alternatives to proprietary integration suites in a time of shrinking budgets and slimming services margins. The company will accelerate its growth, reinforcing its position as a key player in a market still dominated by a handful of proprietary vendors. Talend will also unveil new products in 2009 to help solve emerging integration requirements stemming from merger and acquisition activity as struggling companies are acquired.

“Over the past 12 months we have seen hundreds of new customers and dozens of new partners embrace our open source data integration and data quality technologies as the foundation for enterprise projects,” said Fabrice Bonan, COO and co-founder of Talend. “The open source model is a unique driver of innovation, enabling Talend to rely on a fast-expanding and vibrant community to accelerate its development cycles. The additional funding will allow us to expand our development teams, broaden the functional coverage of our technologies and provide more advanced products and features to our community and customers.”

www.talend.com

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