Talend’s Development and the Return of Social Analytics

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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




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