Technology Interview with Talend COO Fabrice Bonan

In this interview we introduce Talend, the open source data integration and data quality vendor.

We discuss their business model and look at some of the future plans for the French company.

For the benefit of our members, please tell us your name and role.

Fabrice Bonan, I am the COO and co-founder of Talend. Among other tasks, I oversee the design and development of Talend's products.

What is your background?

Prior to co-founding Talend with Bertrand Diard, I was the Technical Director of the integration practice for a large systems integrator, where I managed complex projects for large clients.

Data integration is a domain I am quite familiar with! Before that, I had also co-founded an IT Asset Management software company, based in France and in the Silicon Valley. I have a degree in Computer Science from EPITA in Paris.
What data migration products does Talend produce?

Talend provides open source data integration solutions that help with all the aspects of moving and transforming data between systems: databases, applications, files, etc. Data migration is obviously a large part of data integration.

Your products are Open Source - exactly what does this mean for customer in terms of licensing and using the products?

Talend Open Studio, our flagship solution, can be downloaded at no cost from our Web site (http://www.talend.com/download.php) and it is provided under a GPL license.

This means users can use it, even in production, without restrictions and without having to pay a license fee.

What are the benefits and drawbacks of an open source solution for customers?

The benefits of open source in the case of data migration are numerous:

First, there is no obstacle to adoption: our users go to our web site, download Talend Open Studio, try it, develop with it, deploy, etc. At no point do they need to look for budget, to request a proof of concept from a vendor, etc.

When it comes to deployment, again, no restriction: they can deploy on as many systems as they want.

Finally, one important strength open source brings to Talend Open Studio is the breadth of connectors contained in the product. With over 200 connectors, users will find the right ones for their projects. Talend Open Studio is the data migration solution that has the broadest connectivity!

What is your business model if you adopt an Open-Source approach?

Our business model is very similar to the some of the other very successful open source vendors, such as MySQL or SugarCRM. The free version is a full-featured version, no strings attached. We sell support, training, expertise, and subscription to advanced capabilities such as teamwork development.

By fostering broad adoption of the open source product, we know that we will be able to sustain a profitable business out of the additional services we sell.
Can open source solutions deliver on large, complex, business-critical migration projects?

Absolutely, maybe even more than traditional solutions! Unlike proprietary vendors, we do not subject our users to the mood swings of our price list and of the merger & acquisition market. As far as scalability and performance, our users speak for themselves.

Can you briefly explain some of the features and benefits of your data migration technology?

I'll mention just three important aspects:

• The first one is the Business Modeler, which involved business stakeholders in the design process.
• The second one is the graphical Job Designer, for maximum productivity of the developments.
• And the third one is the code generation, in Java, Perl and SQL, that ensures the most scalability.

For more details on all these features, your readers can check: http://www.talend.com/solutions-data-integration/data-migration.php

What geographical regions do you serve?

All of them! Open source is global, and our community is spread around the globe.
We have offices in North America, Europe and Asia.

What future plans can you share with the data migration community?

There will be some announcement related to data quality, very soon. Stay tuned!

Does Talend have a user community?

Indeed it does: 1.2 million downloads, 250,000 core product downloads – this creates a strong community. We also have 1,500 forum contributors, 1,000 beta testers. We also have a number of community facilities such as a Wiki, forum and team blogs - just check out http://www.talendforge.org/

What type of projects do customers typically use your products for?

All types of data integration projects: data migration of course, but also data synchronization, ETL for business intelligence, data loading, etc.

Can you summarize the benefits of Talend?

The open source approach is number one. Then come the openness of the product, its performance, its pervasiveness, its versatility.

Where should members go to learn more about Talend?

For general information: http://www.talend.com/index.php

For information specific to data migration: http://www.talend.com/solutions-data-integration/data-migration.php