Talend Acquires Sopera, Gets $34 Million in Funding
Talend and Sopera have merged to form what the two claim is the fifth-largest open source software company.
The merger combines Talend’s data management and integration software with Sopera’s enterprise service bus (ESB), application integration and business process management (BPM) technology.
“The data management and application integration markets are quickly converging as they address many of the same technical requirements and customer pain points,” Fabrice Bonan, COO and co-founder of Talend, said in a statement.
Talend also announced that it has closed on a $34 million funding round, led by Silver Lake Sumeru, with participation from previous Talend investors Balderton Capital and IDInvest Partners (formerly AGF Private Equity).
The merger of the two open source middleware partners positions the combined company to take advantage of the “synergies that exist between data management and application integration projects,” Talend said in a press release. The open source core of the company will give it “a unified global middleware platform that costs far less than proprietary technologies, delivers greater functionality and is easier to deploy and manage.”
That unified platform will help IT organizations with one vexing problem: creating a single virtual entity that spans cloud and on-premises environments, according to Yves de Montcheuil, Talend’s vice president of marketing. “IT projects must be deployed and work together,” he told eCRM Guide.
The combined company is also affirming support for its open source projects.
“Talend is committed to continuing support for the Eclipse project and to growing our relationship with the Apache Software Foundation as we contribute to and use these projects in our existing and future offerings,” stated Bonan.
The Sopera ASF product is based on Apache ServiceMix, Apache CXF and Apache ActiveMQ projects and forms the basis for the Eclipse Swordfish SOA runtime project.
Open Source Market Claims
With just under 1,600 combined customers and revenues that doubled in the last year, de Montcheuil claims that the combined company will be the fifth-largest open source company, following Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), Novell (NASDAQ: NOVL), Sourcefire (NASDAQ: FIRE) and Ingres.
451 Group analyst Matthew Aslett said the company “may well be there or thereabouts; depends on how you cut the numbers.”
“You have to decide where to draw the line on ‘pure play,'” Aslett told eCRM Guide. “For example, we would not count Novell. Although they do break out figures for the Linux business, if you include that you could also include a company like Actuate [$18 million in BIRT-related business last year] and then you might as well include IBM or Oracle.
“Similarly some would dispute Sourcefire being on the list given they generate revenue from hardware appliances and so are not pure open source software, although I consider them an open source specialist.”
Aslett thinks the top open source vendors by revenue are Red Hat, Ingres and Alfresco — and after that, it’s anyone’s guess.
“The last time I looked at pure open source software, I put Ingres number two behind Red Hat,” with $68 million in 2008 revenues and modest growth last year, he said. “Alfresco has also publicly laid claim to one of the top spots. We estimated they had $30 million revenue in its fiscal year ended Feb 2010. After that it gets a bit murky, with lots of vendors at a similar level.”
Talend plans a new product roadmap for its new application integration division and its core data management products within 30 days.
Paul Ferrill has been writing for over 15 years about computers and network technology. He holds a BS in Electrical Engineering as well as a MS in Electrical Engineering. He is a regular contributor to the computer trade press. He has a specialization in complex data analysis and storage. He has written hundreds of articles and two books for various outlets over the years. His articles have appeared in Enterprise Apps Today and InfoWorld, Network World, PC Magazine, Forbes, and many other publications.